Theirs is to win, if it kills them

What do Chekhov and the Flaming Lips have in common?

Well, nothing really. But the two were brought together very nicely on Sunday night in the last performance of the Hayloft Project's "Chekhov Re-cut" adaptation of the early Chekhov play, "Platonov". As the play began to arrive at its emotional and dramatic climax towards the end of Act 2, the beautiful strains of "Race for the Prize" began to rise in the background - initially one of the Hayloft Project's more unusual artistic choices, along with the whole set being covered in a few inches of water, and another musical moment, The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love". At least the latter song served the fairly immediate purpose of irony, something developed in particular when it was heard later in the play, being hummed by one of its more tragic characters. But the Flaming Lips? Was it the interplay of chirpy and macabre that they were aiming for? Certainly anything Wayne Coyne touches turns to off-beat gold, which may have been part of the attraction. And yet, on the surface, these curiosities - water; indie classics forming the "soundtrack"; characters engaging in "dance-offs" - could be nothing more than that; novelties included to "spice up" a genius for a generation who can't be bothered to let genius speak for itself.

But the Hayloft Project aren't in to novelties, or gimmicks. "Chekhov Re-cut" was genius itself, something that, dare I say it, Anton himself might have enjoyed, if he were likely to let himself enjoy anything besides laughing at human absurdity. Certainly there was an abundance of human absurdity, and an abundance of near-Hamletian tragedy. And there were laughs. And the laughs came, more often than not, from Chekhov himself, not from the modern revisioning of him.

The Flaming Lips, in recent years, have become quite a curiously optimistic band. On their "Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell" EP of a few years back, Wayne began the last track with a piece of spoken word in which he, in typically pseudo-scientific mode, declared that, "if our ability to feel love is nothing more than a cosmic mistake, I'd like to think that this means the universe is on our side."

Is it? Chekhov imagined a world where the universe was more or less left to its own devices, and the result was not pretty. Most of the time it was lethargic and dull. People sat and stared at ticking clocks and longed for Moscow, or dreaded that first felling of the cherry trees in the orchard. And "Platonov", created by a younger but not really happier Chekhov, is certainly more overtly tragic than any of his later works, which, at least in the case of "Three Sisters" end, with more of a whimper than anything that could be called a bang. But the bangs were aplenty in "Platonov" - false starts, and then that final shot that brought everything to an end, and a beginning, though what kind of beginning we can't say.

At best, for Chekhov the universe has remained neutral. At worst, it's against us. And yet, there's still an ability to feel love, or an ability to love, or make love. And an ability to fight for something, whatever it is - and you feel, at times, like they'll fight for anything, because it's better than fighting for nothing.

After all, they are "just humans, with", in some cases, "wives and children" - or brothers, or sisters, or lovers, and they want to win, but I'm not sure they know what the prize is. It's a pretty watery game of chess they're playing, and it's hard to say where or how it ends. For Platonov, it ends with a bang, but what about everyone else?

And, as is so often the point in Chekhov - What about us?

When "Uncle Vanya" first achieved success, the interval arrived and the audience sat in stunned silence, no idea how to react to something that could kick them so effectively in their existential guts. No-one does it like Chekhov. No-one.

Would Chekhov and Wayne Coyne have agreed about anything? I'm not at all sure. But they created a lovely, meaningful and thought-provoking juxtaposition for me that Sunday evening. The truth, I suspect, probably lies somewhere in between them both.