Urban Myths: Anton and No Cycle

David E. Kemp is head of the Drama Department at Queen’s University.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Standjofski’s plays read so easily is
that he is equally well known as an actor and director, and consequently
writes from those perspectives as well as that of a playwright.

There are three sisters in Anton, which salutes Chekhov with clever
little background jokes. The “cherry orchard” is compressed into one
invisible tree, and nobody goes to Moscow, but the play’s bourgeois,
modern family, preoccupied with wealth and social position, is
essentially Chekhovian in nature. Standjofski manages to balance the
elements of comedy and pathos, a balance that is often lost in actual
productions of Chekhov.

No Cycle finds its inspiration in the Japanese Noh play. Traditionally,
these plays are performed on a bare stage, with very simple production
values, and written in groups of five, with a common topic that is
explored through a progression of mood and tempo. A significant element
of the Noh experience is religion, and although Standjofski does not
give us direct Christian teaching in his modern cycle, he certainly
makes profound observations about life while at the same time making us
laugh. Perhaps this is his greatest strength as a writer: that he
manages to be at once serious and self-mocking.

In both these plays, there is an abiding compassion for humankind,
accompanied by laughter that has about it a whimsical quality of
puzzlement.