Theater Review: "The Seagull," by Anton Chekhov

The past several months have offered New York-area theater fans like myself a bonanza of opportunities to see accomplished actors in meaty roles from Anton Chekhov. The one I would most like to see, The Cherry Orchard, part of “The Bridge Project” of British and American actors who will also perform Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, is now playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. More convenient for me to travel to will be Uncle Vanya, set to open Feb. 12 at the Classic Stage Company in Manhattan, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Denis O’Hare and Peter Sarsgaard. It’s hard to see, however, how either of these can top the production of The Seagull that closed last month at the Walter Kerr Theater. I find it difficult to believe, from this distance in time, that it took me so long to comment on it, particularly when it was one of my favorite experiences at the theater this past year. But many of the subjects of my other blog posts intrigued me so much and were so time-sensitive that I kept putting off reviewing an adept production of this perilously tricky tragicomedy about melancholy and lost loves and hopes in Czarist Russia. Start with the translation by Christopher Hampton. It’s sharp and pungent, with much attention given not merely to the nuances of language but how it all plays on stage. For instance, in a key scene, the mother and son at the heart of the play, Arkadina and Konstantin, insult each other with a cascading series of one-word insults. Translators aiming for the literal meaning in the past might have rendered this in two words or more, but Hampton strove to keep it as close to the original pacing as possible. Director Ian Rickson, transferring his acclaimed production from Britain’s Royal Court Theatre, made sure its sterling value survived the Atlantic crossing, in no small measure due to the cast. Leading the way was Kristin Scott Thomas, who took a different slant on the role of Arkadina, the actress-mother-from hell, from the actress who formed my principal impression of the role, Lee Grant (in a 1973 PBS version that also starred Frank Langella, Kevin McCarthy, and Blythe Danner). Thomas heightened the kittenish aspects of her character rather than the hauteur that Grant stressed, at times giddily twirling about the stage. That made all the more credible her son Konstantin’s bitter observation about their relationship: “When I’m not around she can be 32; when I am, she’s 43. She hates me for it.” That remark encapsulates a portion of Chekhov’s complex attitude toward his characters: his clear-eyed depiction of the vanity of human wishes. Several characters not only desire what they can’t have but are caught in triangular relationships, the primary one being the ferociously Oedipal one among Konstantin, Arkadina and the latter’s younger lover, Trigorin. At the same time, even as the characters' neuroses threaten to drive you mad, Chekhov pulls back enough to reveal, with sympathy, their deepest insecurities: Arkadia's terror of aging, Konstantin's inability to find a place in the world where he can be accepted as anything other than his mother's son. The latter, possessing two things Konstantin wants—success as a writer and the attention of Arkadina—attracts the son’s enmity. In this role, Peter Sarsgaard might have been the one weak link in the show, though not a fatal one. His passivity and hapless falling into the arms of pretty young things reminded me of Jeff Daniels’ annoying professor-husband in the film Terms of Endearment. I hope he’s better in Uncle Vanya next month. Three more members of the excellent cast deserve particular note: * Playing Konstantin, Mackenzie Crook (best known for his appearance in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films as Ragetti), captures the desperation of a young artist struggling to create “new forms” in the theater, only to settle for the sense of mediocrity that comes with giving the public what it wants. Callow and immature at the beginning, he stalks around the stage staring blankly by the play’s shattering denouement. (He is the same age as Saarsgard, but his scarecrow appearance gives him the look of an aging grad student.) * Art Malik added to the pleasant memories I had of him from the PBS Jewel in the Crown mini-series from a quarter-century ago with his turn as the deeply sympathetic writer Dorn, who is in some ways a stand-in for Chekhov. * Zoe Kazan (yes, the granddaughter of famed director Elia) stole the show with her wildly off-center portrayal of the depressed Masha. “I’m in mourning for my life,” her character announces at the beginning of the play, and too many actresses over the years have emphasized the depressive qualities of the character. In a wildly, darkly comic drunk scene, Kazan chugged one drink after another with a bitter, the-hell-with-it abandon. Her turn here makes me anxious to see whether she will add to a resume that promises to be glittering when her film Revolutionary Road goes into wider release later this month.