On & Off Broadway

‘The Present’

Review by Elyse Trevers

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It’s one of the hottest tickets this season – multiple award – winning actress Cate Blanchett’s Broadway debut. The good news is that Cate does not disappoint her audience. The bad news is that the play does. The Present, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Platonov, written by Andrew Upton (Blanchett’s husband,) is an overlong meandering play. Chekhov’s untitled first play ran close to 300 pages and involves a series of characters and confusing relationships.

Somewhat modernized but still complicated, The Present begins with Anna Petrovna’s 40th birthday party. The widow of a much older general, Anna (Blanchett) invites several people to her celebration, including her former tutor, Mikhail, his family, her stepson, Sergei, his wife, and Anna’s two older suitors. Her relationships with the older men aren’t clarified until the very end. She needs money, so she’s willing to marry one of them and is just waiting for the better deal. The antique gun she is given signals the audience that there will be gunshots and perhaps bloodshed before the final curtain.

The 2-hour-55-minute play is presented in four acts. The first is painfully slow as characters enter, and I kept wishing Upton included a genealogy chart, so the characters’ relationships were clear. There are references to politics in Russia but the clothing is modern so the play could be set in the present.


None of the characters is likable or empathetic. Mikhail is longwinded. Sergei is always whining and much of his dialogue is uttered in partial sentences. The older men are garrulous, especially when drinking – and there’s a lot of drinking!

Nevertheless, Blanchett is exciting to watch. The most exciting scene of the play is the party itself in Act 2 when she, as well as the other characters, dance in wild abandon. Blanchett is maternal, flirtatious and controlling. She manipulates all the characters in the play. The role gives Blanchett a chance to deal with several different aspects of Anna’s personality.

Her co-star, Richard Roxburgh, as Mikhail, is the most interesting character in the play. As the tutor-teacher, his character is constantly pontificating. Roxburgh gets the best lines and is sarcastic, romantic and disillusioned. Although Mikhail claims that he needs and loves his wife and young child, he counts the 30 minutes until he can join Maria in her bed. He flirts outrageously with Sophia, Sergei’s wife, causing her to leave her husband. Roxburgh is sexy and clever and charming and each of the four women in the play is understandably attracted to him.

Chekhov was an acknowledged master of the theater but as with all geniuses, some of his plays were better than others. His work was originally entitled “A play without a title” and it is uncertain as to when it was written. Just because Chekhov wrote The Present doesn’t mean the drama is a gift.

The Present is a limited run and if it weren’t for Blanchett, it would be even more limited.