The Power of Darkness

"The Power of Darkness" (original Russian title "Власть тьмы", "Vlast' t'my") also known as "The Dominion of Darkness" is a five-act dramatic play by Leo Tolstoy, written in 1886. The play was long-banned in Russia.

The central character is a peasant, Nikita, who seduces and abandons a young girl Marinka; then the lovely Anisija murders her own husband to marry Nikita. He impregnates his new stepdaughter, then, under his wife's influence, murders the baby. On the day of his stepdaughter's marriage, he surrenders himself and confesses to the police.

Production history

Constantin Stanislavski, the great Russian theatre practitioner, had wanted to stage the play in 1895; he had persuaded Tolstoy to rewrite act four along lines that Stanislavski had suggested, but the production did not materialise. He eventually staged it with his Moscow Art Theatre in 1902. That production opened on the 5th December and enjoyed some success. Stanislavski, however, was scathingly critical, particularly of his own performance as Mitrich. [Benedetti (1999, 126-127).] Years later, in his autobiography "My Life in Art", he wrote:

Realism only becomes Naturalism when it is not justified by the artist from within.
[...] the external realism of the production of "The Power of Darkness" revealed the absence of inner justification in those of us who were acting in it. The stage was taken over by things, objects, banal outward "events" [...] which crushed the inner meaning of the play and characters. [Quoted by Benedetti (1999, 127).]

Actor Jacob Adler had a New York hit in 1904 with his own Yiddish translation—the first successful production of a Tolstoy play in the United States—and a 1920 English-language Broadway production ran for over 85 performances.

In 1923, the German epic theatre director Erwin Piscator staged the play at his "proletarian Volksbühne" (a rival to the Volksbühne), at the Central-Theater in Berlin. [Willett (1978, 16).]

Notes

Works cited

* Adler, Jacob. 1999. "A Life on the Stage: A Memoir". Translated by Lulla Rosenfeld. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0679413510. p.354.
* Benedetti, Jean. 1999. "Stanislavski: His Life and Art". Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413525201.
* Willett, John. 1978. "The Theatre of Erwin Piscator: Half a Century of Politics in the Theatre". London: Methuen. ISBN 0413378101.