Nick's Place

The Seagull

Nicholas Barnard 10/15/2000

Anton Chekhov's The Seagull is a 102-year-old play. It is unfair to hold the script to today's standards of total realism. Art in any form goes through changes and trends. The current trend that has been underway for many years is a movement toward realism. The Seagull was written in an age devoid of this realistic trend, and in many ways helped to start it. Seeing this play produced in its fantasized realism way was jolting given our current state in the trend, but in context to the play and our times, it served as an excellent and fundamental bridge. Producing this play in neither a totally realistic nor a totally fantasized way would have properly served this play in our current time.

The play itself is dated. The style is old and overplayed, having been reinvented several times since the play was written. The characterizations are comical and over the top. The climax is highly effective but the road to it is bumpy and wrought with bits of the character's histories presented in a garbage milkshake style.

Given the style of the script the team of actresses and actors that attacked this performed an admirable job. The characters that I saw on the stage were not real people, they could not have been real people and achieved Checkhov's goals. The ensemble of actors worked well to provide a general picture of the relationships involved with the characters, and also did a highly realistic job of carrying on silent false stage conversations.

I believe the ultimate product was intended to be a melding of realism and fantasy. Achieving this onstage is a Herculean feat. The director walked an excellent tight rope for at least the first two sets, but fell over on the realism side with the last two sets. While the first two sets only outline the general atmosphere, balancing the realism/fantasy tightrope well, the second two sets looked like box sets that were built for a stage ten feet narrower, and broken up and moved apart to fit the actual stage. I also felt the forest set on the wing caps was an interesting choice, probably one that I would not have made.

The pacing dragged at times, and felt wrought out by the two superfluous tableaus. The first two tableaus served very little purpose, and should have been deleted to keep the play moving, and provide a greater effect to the final tableau.

The technical staff provided and excellent realization of the directors aims, as splintered as they maybe. There was not one fault that I could find with the execution or stylistic choices made in the sound, lights, or set. Nor could I pin point any error in the execution.

The audience seemed bored, and unresponsive at many points. There were characteristic signs of an inattentive or lost audience, most notably the laughter of a few, followed by a greater number joining in confusion.

This production of The Seagull was a dutiful presentation of the play. It failed in any sense to move it to a higher level, but just merely reproduced the text. The attempts at using ballet to embellish the play felt odd and were emblematic of a multivision production