Country life From Russia with love [and lust] BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

Oh, Ivan Turgenev, surely you jest. You mean to say that the love lives of the landed class are as complicated and amusingly tragic as those of the colorful peasantry?

Turgenev’s A Month In the Country, one of the few plays by the novelist and short story writer, charmed and inspired Chekhov with its realistic depictions of 1850s Russian rural life. The current 2nd Story Theatre production (through December 11) enlivens these clearly drawn characters as entertainingly as if we were watching a soap opera.

Maybe the wide screen is a better comparison. Two vast landscape paintings by Candis Dixon, perhaps 10’x12’, bracket a sunny rise between a brook and a tree-lined hilltop, where the bucolic revels take place, in artistic director Ed Shea’s set design.

The action swirls around the lady of the land, Natalya (Rae Mancini), and the ribald fevers inspired on these bright summer days. We are out in the wild, after all, and though servants bring coffee and tea, their unabashed lustiness is another reminder of what corsets confine. For the past month, Natalya has been eyeing the new tutor, Aleksey (Kyle Maddock), 21 and "so unjaded," as she admiringly puts it.

That’s the central relationship, but others branch off like a corporate flowchart designed by Cupid and de Sade. Natalya’s husband, Arkady (John Michael Richardson), is as loving to her as she is bored with him. But he is a simple sort who can’t keep names straight. He spends more quality time with the small dam he is constructing than with his wife, oblivious that her pent-up passions also need diverting.

She’s ignoring one opportunity she’s had for years: devoted friend of the family Michel (Will Jamison). Her self-described "lapdog" would like their mutual love to be more than intensely platonic, she finds out.

Of course, there has to be at least potential competition for the affections of the tutor, and that is in the ironically formidable form of Natalya’s 17-year-old ward, Vera (Gabby Sherba). Formidable because she is beautiful, ironic because the young orphan knows very well that she could be out on the street (cow path?) if her foster mother came to despise her as a rival.

An entire soap opera season of suspense, revelations, betrayals, and turnabouts takes place in these two days, with a few sitcom episodes thrown in for good measure. The comical German guest, Herr Schaaf (Bob Colonna), keeps popping up with delightful near-misses in vocabulary — a hobby is archery, but he brags of being a "prize-winning lecher," and "love-making" becomes "lust-making" in the sprightly translation by Irish playwright Brian Friel (Dancing at Lughnasa).

More comic relief is provided by Shipgelsky (Jim Sullivan), born a peasant but now a doctor, although admittedly an inept one. With his crude bawdy jokes, he could be played as a boor, but under Shea’s direction, Sullivan gives him enough buoyant humanity to make us glad for him and spinster Lizaveta (Susan Bowen Powers) when he calms down and proposes. Also entertaining is the boldly slutty maid Katya (Laura Sorensen), who wholeheartedly plays slap and tickle with Herr Schaff while playing hard to get with a serious older prospect, fellow servant Matvey (Walter Cotter).

Mancini has the trickiest balancing act here, since Natalya’s manipulative actions can make us dismiss her from serious concern. But we remain interested because the actor convinces us that Natalya has been deluding herself along with the others. As usual, Sherba supplies Vera with vivacious and alert intelligence, which in this case amplifies the poignancy of her potential sad end: a wealthy but dull landowner up the road (Bill Dunn), 40 years her senior, wants to marry her, which would suit Natalya’s fantasy scenario just fine.

In the other crucial role of the young tutor, Maddock settles into a convincing portrayal after an initially hyped-up entrance as a nervous young man. As Arkady, the potentially cuckolded husband, Richardson does well, maintaining the tottering balance of an offended husband who must remain both righteously indignant and helplessly affectionate.

One of the performances here could easily be a throwaway. Anna (Marilyn Meardon) is Arkady’s mother, as imperious as her station demands, and yet as timelessly wise as Mother Russia herself. Meardon has Anna reveal herself as though peeling off a mask, in order to get through to her son that even his father could be unfaithful while remaining a loving spouse.

Good show, 2nd Story. We don’t have to be Russian or Irish to shake our heads in bemused recognition.