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MorrisCo Art Theater, hailed by the Ann Arbor News as “a top-notch troupe,” will present Turgenev’s  “A Month in the Country,” directed by Susan Morris, at Ann Arbor Civic Theater, Downtown, 408 West Washington Street, Ann Arbor.

MorrisCo has kindly agreed to a present a performance in aid of the Habitat for Humanity-Catholic Build on May 14th at 7.00 p.m for the second consecutive year. For tickets to this performance, please contact Shirly D’silva (734) 827-9727 or Joanne Caniglia (734) 483-3618. We will be happy to mail the tickets to you or hold them at the box office.  The tickets are priced at $12 for students and seniors and & $15 for others.

We greatly appreciate your generosity in our fund-raising effort. We guarantee a wonderful experience for the whole family.

The large cast ranges in age from the teen-aged professional Brigit Mikusko (“Stand” at the Purple Rose) to the octogenarian heart-throb, Phyllis Wright (Thursday and Saturday performances) and also includes local theater veterans (alphabetically) Naomi Carnes, Margie Cohen (Fri/Sun), Peter Greenquist, Tim Grimes, Carl Hanna, David Keosaian,  Elizabeth McNamara, Leo McNamara, Mary Anne Nemeth, Chris Starkey, and Paul Taylor. Terry Carnes (“Hedda Gabler,” “I remember Mama”) returns from a tour of duty in professional regional theater to design costumes, Mark Savickas will build director Morris’ set, and Rob Boonin will provide the lighting design.

For her script, Morris, chose a modern translation by twentieth century British playwright, film-maker, and actor, Emlyn Williams, for the grace of its of language and accessibility to modern audiences. Morris says,  “Williams has the writer’s gift of beautiful words, and the actor’s understanding of what plays well to an audience. 

British playwright and director Peter Gill writes: “A Month in the Country” . . . was originally to have been called ‘The Student’ but this had connotations that were too openly revolutionary. . . .The play was thought to be an attack on marriage and immediately ran into problems with the Russian censor.”

Although Turgenev completed the play in 1850, the censor refused to permit its original text to be published until 1869. It was not performed until 1872. This heavy-handed treatment persuaded Turgenev to turn his attention to writing novels which afforded him more artistic freedom. 

Scene:  The country estate of Arkady Yslaev, near Moscow.  Summer of 1850.
Natalia Petrovna has married at a young age — a marriage of convenience to Arkady Yslaev, a wealthy landowner who is hardworking and kind, but utterly unaware of his wife’s needs.   A number of years later, we find her living with him, their small son Kolia, her husband’s mother and her companion, Natalia’s 17-year old ward Vera, Kolia’s elderly and fussy tutor, and a number of servants in a large country estate near Moscow. Her tedious days are broken only by visits from the local doctor, a manipulative if rather amusing character, and her husband’s oldest friend, Mikhail Rakitin, a poet and a kind, gentle man who has, to his great misfortune, fallen in love with Natalia. 

Suddenly, into this peaceful if somewhat dull existence, there appears a person who will change Natalia’s life forever. She and her husband have hired a new tutor for their son, a handsome young man named Beliaev. Natalia is besotted, Vera is swooning, and even the clever maid is thoroughly impressed with this young fellow — his youth, his beauty, his vigor, his naturalness.

Meanwhile Bolshintsov, a neighbor who is no longer young and far from prepossessing, has set his sites on Vera, and the Doctor is pressing Natalia to encourage this union.

Natalia finds herself in a state of confusion.  Should she pursue her attraction to the young tutor?  Should she pursue a relationship with Rakitin, to whom she is very attached?  Or should she remain faithful to her excellent husband?  Should she or should she not encourage Vera to marry the stodgy Bolshintsov, thereby removing her as a rival for Beliaevís affections.  Natalia has never before experienced love, and it has completely knocked her off her feet.  In this bewildering state, she must make decisions that will affect not only herself, but the lives of everyone she cares for.

In directing “A Month in the Country,” Morris, fresh from a year of modern comedy, returns to her own territory. In her long career, Morris has tamed every kind of stage animal, from Gilbert and Sullivan and grand opera to Anton Chekhov and Tennessee Williams, but her love of classic plays sustains her. For Morris and her company, “A Month in the Country” will be a labor of love. 

You can enjoy “A Month in the Country” to laugh at a comic drama of Russian bourgeois life in 1850, or to see what scandalized the Russian censor in the mid-nineteenth century, to see how Turgenev profoundly influenced Chekhov. Or, just inhale it as a fragrant, romantic whiff of spring. Any way you look at it, it’s a lively evening of theater. 

Regular shows  run May 15-18, 2003, with Thursday through Saturday performances at 8:00 at Sunday matinee at 2:00 P.M at the same location.