[NEohioPAL] Review of GLTF's "The Seagull"

[Bob Abelman]

Great Lakes Production of The Seagull soars

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review appeared in the News-Herald 4/17/09

 

Tragicomedy is a high wire act, a delicate balance of drama and comedy that can easily tilt one way or another upon the currents of a director's whims or an actor's choices.   In the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival's current rendition of The Seagull, director Drew Barr and his talented troupe find a very comfortable equilibrium.  

The setting for Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's 1895 play is the lakeside estate on which the elderly Sorin (Dudley Swetland) lives with his nephew Konstantin (Kevin Crouch), who is an aspiring playwright with visions of revolutionizing the theatre.  They are visited during a summer hiatus by Konstantin's mother Arkadina (Laura Perrotta), a highly successful, high maintenance actress, and her lover Trigorin (Andrew May), a famous novelist.

Other guests include Dorn (Aled Davies), the urbane country doctor; Medvedenko (Ian Gould), a timid schoolteacher; Nina (Gisela Chipe), the beautiful young daughter of a wealthy neighbor from across the lake; and Shamrayev (David Anthony Smith), his wife, Paulina (Lynn Allison) and their perennially depressed daughter, Masha (Sara Bruner), who run Sorin's farm. 

Each character in Chekhov's play is, essentially, a wounded seagull, desperately wanting to be someone other than who they are and someplace other than where they happen to be, but are either incapable or unwilling to take flight.  Perhaps they are just weighed down by all their psychological baggage, for everyone is desperately in love with someone who is desperately in love with someone else.  It is from the dynamic tension generated by these base emotions and lofty aspirations that the human tragedy and ironic comedy of this play arise.  

In this GLTF adaptation of Chekhov's work, the first act lays bare the pervasive haplessness and weighty frustration that consumes these characters.  It reveals every character's misstep and missed opportunity or, in the case of Konstantin's botched suicide attempt, his misfire.

The second act unfolds 10 years later and demonstrates how time intensifies and solidifies life's cruel twists and turns, which is best exemplified by Konstantin's successful effort to end his failure of a life.   

Director Barr layers this production with melancholy so gelatinous that these characters appear to be expending all their energy engaging in the simple act of self-expression and coexisting with one another.  They so desire to retreat into their own malaise that Barr allows them to turn their backs on one another, as the farm manager Shamrayev does while watching the production of Konstantin's latest play, or rock back and forth in a dark corner, as Masha does while contemplating her miserable marriage.  

All this is complemented by Russell Metheny's minimalist set design, Peter West's lighting and Kim Krumm Sorenson's costumes, which provide enough to give audience members a sense of time and place but not so much as to distract them from this intense play and the fine, refined performances of its actors.

In a complete counterpoint to the brazen performances they deliver in The Comedy of Errors, which runs in repertory with this production, these actors are marvelously muted in their presentation here.  Each character is complex and fully developed, and each player takes great pains to bear the full weight of his or her tragedy and squeeze out, with no apparent recognition, his or her more comedic expressions.  Some really good acting is performed on this stage.   

Over the years, numerous companies have sought to gain new insight or offer new interpretation of Chekhov's work.  This GLTG production of The Seagull does not.  It is pure, streamlined and takes flight.

 

This is how Chekhov is meant to be played.

 

The Seagull continues in repertory with Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors through May 3 at PlayhouseSquare's Hanna Theatre.  For tickets, which range from $13 to $67, call 216-241-6000 or visit www.greatlakestheater.org
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