• The Power of Darkness in the American Way: The Premiere Production of Leo Tolstoy’s Play on Broadway

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DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2023-4-42-71

EDN: FQIKYA

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Maxim M. Gudkov

Senior lecturer of Department of interdisciplinary art studies and practices of the Faculty of liberal arts and sciences
Saint Petersburg State University, Russian State Institute of Performing Art
Saint Petersburg, Russia
E-mail: m.gudkov@spbu.ru

The Power of Darkness in the American Way: The Premiere Production of Leo Tolstoy’s Play on Broadway

Abstract

The study focuses on the analysis of the American premiere of Leo Tolstoy’s play The Power of Darkness, which was performed in 1920 by the Broadway venue — Theatre Guild. The stage embodiment of Tolstoy’s drama is examined in the wide political and cultural US macro-context of “Era of Prosperity” (The Roaring Twenties). A brief biography and a creative portrait of The Power of Darkness director in the USA, Emanuel Reicher, are provided, which allow us to define him as a major figure not only of the German stage, but also of the Jewish and American ones. The process of exporting Tolstoy’s play from Russia through France (Théâtre Libre of André Antoine) and Germany (Freie Bühne of Otto Brahm, where E. Reicher played in one of The Power of Darkness revival) to the USA is reconstructed. The reasons that caused the appearance of Tolstoy’s play on the American stage are revealed: the lag of the overseas theatre (both stage practice and dramaturgy) from Europe, the lack of directing and “new drama”, as well as the desire of the Guild’s management to incorporate European innovations into its practice. The cause of the production’s short stage fate are explained — the discrepancy between the philosophical and ethical ideas of the Tolstoy’s play to the pragmatism and puritanical worldview of Americans, the contradiction between the dramatic material and the traditional expectations and tastes of the Broadway audience. This study allows for further deepening the understanding the presence and reception of Leo Tolstoy’s drama on the US stage as well as to clarify the picture of cultural relations between the two countries in the twentieth century. The analysis of Broadway’s The Power of Darkness is based on materials from the collections of the Houghton Library (Harvard University), the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Yale University), the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the A.M. Gorky Museum in A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow).

Keywords

Leo Tolstoy, Russian drama, American theatre, Broadway, Theatre Guild, The Power of Darkness (“Vlast’ t’my”), Emanuel Reicher.

For citation

Gudkov M.M. The Power of Darkness in the American Way: The Premiere Production of Leo Tolstoy’s Play on Broadway. Theatre. Fine Arts. Cinema. Music. 2023, no. 4, pp. 42–71.

DOI: 10.35852/2588-0144-2023-4-42-71

EDN FQIKYA

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Received: 03.10.2023

Revised: 08.11.2023

Accepted: 10.11.2023