The Meaning of Falling Snow: Experiencing Chekhov in France

I had not expected a two-week vacation in southern France to get me thinking about Chekhov. But then I had not expected to find a theater in Uzès, the small market town where I was relaxing with friends.

Regardez la neige qui tombe: Une promenade dans la vie et l’œuvre de Tchekhov is a lovely exploration of the life and work of Chekhov. A two-person show originally produced at the Festival Off in Avignon, it’s now touring France and played Uzès for one night.

The creator of the piece, Philippe Mangenot, calls it a pièce-paysage as opposed to a pièce-machine. That is, we are presented with a “paysage”, a landscape of Chekhov’s life and work rather than a “machine”, a play driven by plot. The “promenade” of the subtitle invites us to take a stroll through his life and work, observing and appreciating as we look.

The actress Raphaèle Huou introduces us to Chekhov with quotes from his letters as well as monologues from the plays. But it’s not long before the director, Mangenot himself, breaks the fourth wall by leaping onto the stage to argue with her too-somber reading from The Cherry Orchard.

Text in hand, he reprimands her delivery. “She laughs,” he insists, quoting the stage direction. She objects: it’s sad! But she does what she’s told. She lies down on the stage and laughs as she runs through the monologue. 

It works, but still she objects. Striding over to a table piled with Chekhov’s works, she picks up one text after another, defiantly reading one line from each.

“You have no idea what hell I live in! A hell of vulgarity and disappointment.”

“Tell me why I’m alive: why this uninterrupted procession of suffering, both physical and spiritual.”

And Masha’s famous line from The Seagull on why she always wears black: “I’m in mourning for my life.” 

It’s a funny interchange, but it’s a sly move as well. The argument between actress and director over how to interpret what Chekhov always insisted were comedies gets to the heart of what baffles me when I watch his plays. How can these portrayals of quiet desperation be anything other than heartbreaking?

I was reminded during the play of just how harsh Chekhov’s own life was and yet how lightly he lived it. Beaten regularly as a child, he supported his parents and siblings throughout his adult life. In his twenties when he experienced the first symptoms of the tuberculosis that would kill him, he treated plague victims and travelled to Siberia to witness and write about the conditions of convicts on Sakhalin Island.

And he wrote. Besides the plays, over 500 short stories and thousands of letters to countless friends.

And he died at the age of 44, champagne glass in hand. 

In spite of Mangenot’s insistence that this is not a highly structured pièce-machine, he has built the work around the inevitability of Chekhov’s death. Huou actually begins the play not with a monologue but with a description of his death. 

Chekhov and his wife were at a spa in Germany when the end came. The doctor was about to call for oxygen but Chekhov told him it was too late. And so he called instead for a bottle of champagne and three glasses. Chekhov shared a toast with his wife and the doctor, observed that he had not drunk champagne in some time, and died.

In a lovely callback to this story, Huou ends the play by opening a case of champagne and inviting us to share a glass with her.

It’s a touching grace note to this exploration, one that tells us not to try to analyze Chekhov, simply to experience him. The title—Regardez la neige qui tombe—comes from Three Sisters. Baron Tuzenbach responds to Masha’s quest for meaning: “Meaning? Look at the snow falling. Where’s the meaning in that?”