The Seagull

Thursday, 30 April 2009

I don’t know quite what I expected from this Chekhov play – I had heard that his works are dour, talky, with languidly morose depictions; but this adaptation actually had a lot of humour, and some of the characterisations, such as lovelorn Masha (Michelle Davidson) were really rather droll.

Gifted actress and director Marcelle Schmitz has certainly teased out relatively naturalistic performances from her cast drawn from the WAAPA 2^nd year Acting Students, as despite the heightened drama involved in the plot lines, the truth of Chekhov exploring people’s everyday lives and how they justify their choices crosses the barriers of time and place. The theme of unrequited love and cross relationship entanglements formed a lot of the scenes and while the setting may have been 19^th century Russia, the discussions on the nature of fame, age, depression, and living within your means and superannuation (!) made it seem positively modern.

Kostya (Wade Briggs – in an intense and focussing performance) is introduced to us nervous yet excited, he is about to debut his play and is eager to showcase his leading lady Nina (Aileen Huynh) with whom he is desperately in love with. She’s not immune to his enthusiasm for her, but is far more interested in impressing the writer Trigorin (Nicholas McRobbie), erstwhile lover of Kostya’s famed actress mother Arkadina (Eloise Winestock) a scene stealer in every sense, and with enough ego to swallow up all the air in the room. Winestock is hilarious and later proves her dramatic acting chops in a scene with Kostya, first comforting her son tenderly while changing his bandages and then angrily confronting him as they snipe at the complexities of their relationship.

The central role of Nina in the first act needs such a delicate balance of youthful enthusiasm and dreamy virginal sensuality (she is said to have stolen the hearts of all the men of this country estate) that when she later returns as a broken, delusional young woman desperate to just be in the same house as her ex-lover Trigorin, it’s supposed to be a visceral shock to the audience. It’s a challenging role for any actress and I found Huynh a little uneven in her characterisation, but overall the cast was up to the challenge of enormous monologues and pages of singular dialogue.

Smaller characters such as Dr Dorn (Eric Beecroft – easygoingly charismatic) and Shamrayev (Oliver Wakelin) a booming and unselfconscious fan of Arkadina, provided slices of side humour, or in the doctor’s case, a lone voice of support for the depressed Kostya. Paul Dowson as Uncle Sorin, Arkadina’s straight arrow of a civil servant brother, wishing at the end of his life to have accomplished something fair more creative and grand, almost made my heart stop at one point; his hand falling off his chest, his death dreadfully anticipated. But then he snores and everyone laughs nervously. Chekhov wouldn’t do that to us! All the big action takes place off stage! The attempted suicide of Kostya, the affair between Nina and Trigorn, the triumphs and downfalls – these are all absent from our eyes, and we simply hear of them from the characters passing news to each other concerning beloved friends and acquaintances.

The staging was neat and compact with smart use of the trellis side sets and a mirror-like movable entry. The stage crew were as ghosts, experienced and sure. The music was sweet, but forgettable, less another element to distract from the dialogue. But it is the words, words, words that fill the stage and now with this introduction to his work, I shall shy no more away from Anton Chekhov and instead welcome future opportunities to see into his broken sardonic heart.