Lomov: 'It's cold... I'm trembling'
Ivan Lomov, an anxious, hypochondriac landowner of thirty-five, has arrived at his neighbour's house in his best evening dress to propose marriage to the daughter, Natalya. Left alone for a moment while she is fetched, he tries to steady his nerves and talk himself into going through with it. He wants to marry—if his racing heart and jangled nerves will only let him.
It's cold... I'm trembling all over, just as if I'd got an examination before me.
The great thing is, I must have my mind made up.
If I give myself time to think, to hesitate, to talk a lot, to look for an ideal, or for real love, then I'll never get married.
Brr!... It's cold!
Natalya Stepanovna is an excellent housekeeper, not bad-looking, well-educated.
What more do I want?
But I'm getting a noise in my ears from excitement.
And it's impossible for me not to marry.
In the first place, I'm already 35—a critical age, so to speak.
In the second place, I ought to lead a quiet and regular life.
I suffer from palpitations, I'm excitable and always getting awfully upset.
At this very moment my lips are trembling, and there's a twitch in my right eyebrow.
But the very worst of all is the way I sleep.
I no sooner get into bed and begin to go off when suddenly something in my left side—gives a pull, and I can feel it in my shoulder and head.
I jump up like a lunatic, walk about a bit, and lie down again, but as soon as I begin to get off to sleep there's another pull!
And this may happen twenty times....
How to Play It
Lomov is talking himself into a proposal he is terrified of. The comedy comes from the gap between his logical checklist ('an excellent housekeeper, not bad-looking') and his galloping panic.
Physicalise the symptoms—the twitching eyebrow, the palpitations, the phantom 'pull' in his side. The more specifically the body betrays him, the funnier the calm words become.
Let the pauses and the 'Brr!' be real stops. Lomov keeps losing and re-finding his nerve; play the tiny recoveries, then the next collapse.
Don't signal that it's funny. Lomov takes his own catastrophes with deadly seriousness—the audience laughs precisely because he doesn't.
Want Will to Coach You Through It?
A monologue is a two-person scene where the other person never speaks. Working it 1-on-1 with a working actor is the fastest way to make it land.