On December 16, 2008, I was lucky to grab rush tickets with some good friends for the evening performance of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. With 5 days before this English production of the play finished its Broadway run at the Walter Kerr Theatre, this was my most memorable December treat to date, and the best play I’ve seen.
I used to abstain from plays, blaming the medium for being dry and out of touch, for using its trickery to lull me into a drool of sleep. Ah, if only I had confirmation that I was just seeing bad plays or productions of them! Even experimental theater I’d seen was premature and needed fine tuning.
Instead, I sat at the edge of my seat- vibrantly focused, locked into absorbing the world created by the set design.. accepting for the first time the stage sounds as real (in the world I was peering into) and allowing them to reverberate through me. This adaptation executed the delivery of lines with masterful timing, allowing us to enjoy Chekhov’s sharp-witted lightness, while braiding it into the heavier narrative of unrequited love and fading beauty.
Synopsis:
The Seagull
By Anton Chekhov
Translated by Christopher Hampton
Directed by Ian Rickson
CHEKHOV SOARS TO NEW HEIGHTS
It might seem surprising that Ian Rickson should have chosen to end his seven-year tenure overseeing new writing at The Royal Court with a production of Chekhov. But The Seagull is a great play about how to write for the theatre – its young, tormented protagonist Konstantin is determined to overthrow the old and find new forms of expression. Moreover, as Rickson’s superb production makes explicit, its a play that spells out the damage incurred by squandered talent and ruined dreams. So, an apt choice for a director whose reign may not have always produced explosive new plays, but which has always been careful to nurture and consolidate new writers.
Furthermore, this production is practically perfect. Rickson has always been a great director – clean lucid, pure – and his approach is perfectly suited to Chekhov, who demands subtlety and clarity. He’s also assembled a crack cast. Kristin Scott Thomas is almost too good as the vain, imperial aging actress Arkadina – an ice queen bitch who conveys volumes with a mere flick of her eyebrow, yet who also reveals in a flicker the extent to which Arkadina’s impeccable theatrical performances are rooted in insecurity about being loved and getting old.
The cruelty of unrequited love and fading youth are the other two great themes here, and Rickson emphasises throughout the extent to which the narcissism and myopia of people seemingly paralysed by their circumstances become such a strong force for destruction and waste. Nowhere is that more evident than in the two youngest characters. Carey Mulligan is a fresh, passionate Nina, full of blooming optimism and ambition, and her last, almost too painful, exchange with Mackenzie Crooks superlative earnest, cadaverous Konstantin – played here as a man wise beyond his years – is the productions consummate moment.
Rickson also packs in the comedy. Katherine Parkinson is hilarious as the suicidal Masha. When Arkadinas ailing brother Sorin has a dizzy turn he topples headlong on to a pile of suitcases.
-Claire Allfree, The Metro, 30th January 2007
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