TheatreguideLondon
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The TheatreguideLondon Review
Seagull
Arcola Theatre Summer 2011
One of the dozen or so greatest plays
ever written by anyone anywhere is being given just about as fine a
production as you could reasonably ask for.
I would happily send a
first-timer to the Arcola to discover what a great playwright Chekhov
is, and I can also recommend it to Chekhov veterans for the many
fresh colours and lovely touches director Joseph Blatchley and his
cast bring to the play.
The Seagull (translators Blatchley, Charlotte
Pyke and John Kerr have for some reason omitted the usual definite
article) is about a group of unhappy people, each thoroughly pitiable
in his or her private unhappiness, except for the fact that their own
pains make them blind to those of the others, and frequently
unconsciously or consciously cruel.
The writer Trigorin is so
tortured by his obsession with writing that he can't appreciate how
fully young Nina is in love with him, Nina is so besotted with
Trigorin that she has little energy with which to deal with
Konstantin's love for her, Kostya is in such agony over Nina's
rejection that he can't be bothered with Masha's love for him, and so
on.
Chekhov takes us deep enough into each character to make us
understand that none of them is evil, and then he draws back and
makes us see as well all the harm they don't seem able to help doing
to each other.
While this is a tragic vision, the play is not as
unrelentingly grim as I make it sound, and another side to Chekhov's
genius is the ability to show us the ridiculous comedy that lives
alongside all this pain, as well as the warm and human moments when
the characters do manage occasionally to look outside themselves.
Director Blatchley captures all of this, with the help of some
beautifully sensitive performances.
Making her professional debut,
Yolanda Kettle proves herself a born Nina, capturing the endearing
openness of the innocent young girl and then breaking our hearts with
her Ophelia-like destruction.
Al Weaver's Kostya is adolescent love
personified, with all the agony and foolishness, sincerity and
self-indulgence. Geraldine James lets us see all the vanity and
miserliness in Arkadina but defines her by an insecurity and
neediness that go far to excuse her, while Matt Wilkinson frees
Trigorin from any taint of villainy by taking us fully into the
character's own private hell.
Indeed, I could go on naming everyone
in the cast, but I do have to mention Jodie McNee's Masha, who
embodies the dictum that there are no minor characters in Chekhov.
The new translation is adequate, with a couple of nice touches, like
turning Kostya's self-flagellating soliloquy in the last act into a
conversation with the sympathetic Dorn. But there is one major
misstep.
A key line which I remember as 'A man comes along and,
having nothing better to do, destroys her' has been turned into 'and,
being bored, shoots her' – far too literal and nowhere near as
resonant.
Every classic has touchstone moments, scenes that the
veteran waits for, to see how this production will handle them. For
me, the key to this play is a scene in which Trigorin tries to
explain to Nina how unglamorous his life is and the poor girl is too
starstruck to believe him, and then (in the line I just mentioned) he
unconsciously tells her what he's going to do to her, and she just
can't hear him.
And all I have to say is that I have to go back to
James Mason and Vanessa Redgrave in the 1968 film to find a version
as moving and true as the one here – and then to add that just
about everything else in the production is on the same high level.Gerald Berkowitz
Review - Seagull - Arcola 2011