|
The Sea Gull
By Anton Chekhov
Translated by Jean-Claude van Italie
Directed by Michael Menendian
At Raven Theatre
6157 N. Clark Street
Chicago, IL
Call 773-338-2177, tickets $25 – $20 seniors & students
Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm
Sundays at 3 pm
Running time 2hr 10 min with Intermission
Through May 27, 2007
“We need new forms.
New forms are needed, and if we can't have them,
then we had better have nothing at all.”
--- A. Chekhov, from The Sea Gull
Seagull spreads its wings nicely
Raven Theatre offers an enchanting production of Anton Chekhov’s (1860-1904)1896 masterpiece tale of love, jealousy, the nature of art and theater translated by Jean-Claude van Italie. Set in Czarist Russia in the late 1890’s, The Sea Gull, with period-perfect costumes by Liz Schroeder exists in a timeless state where the players weave through uncharted psychological minefields.
The Sea Gull is quintessential Chekhov and his earliest success as a playwright. It centers on Treplyev (emotional turn from Tom Batemen), a young writer who hopes to shatter the staid world of the theater with something fresh and experimental. He gathers a group of friends and family at his country estate for the first performance and the results are both comic and tragic and insightful.
The plot is about unrequited love; all the characters love someone who doesn't care for them. The only equal relationship is the affair between successful author Trigorin (smart work from Paul Dunckel) and actress Arkadina (JoAnn Montemurro), which is not exactly one with much love in it. The central characters in the play are Arkadina's son, Treplyev, who is an aspiring author, and local girl Nina (Cora Vander Broek), whom he loves but who prefers Trigorin because he might be able to arrange for her to get a part in a play in Moscow. The play contains a lot of discussion of drama, and includes excerpts from the play Treplyev has written for Nina, in which she takes the part of the World Spirit. It is an experimental, symbolist play; Treplyev wants to move drama on, but his work is fairly typical of second rate avant garde literature.
Billed as a comedy, The Sea Gull was a failure in its first run in St. Petersburg yet meets with success in 1898 at Stansilavsky’s Moscow Art Theatre. When a play opens with “I’m in morning for my life” when Masha (Melissa Nedell) is asked why she only wears black dresses.
 |
Through his characters' personalities, Chekhov portrays the various manners of being an artist and particularly, an artist in love. All four protagonists are artists in love. Arkadina, Trigorin, Treplyev, and Nina have divergent relationships with their craft and their lovers. Arkadina and Nina romanticize acting, placing it on a pedestal higher than the everyday affairs of life. Arkadina places herself on this same pedestal using her identity as an actress to excuse her vanity. Nina exalts acting as well, but, contrary to Arkadina, she endows acting with nobility, sacrifice, and privilege. In writing, Konstantin compulsively paralyzes himself in the pursuit of perfection, while Trigorin obsessively gathers details from his life and the lives around him for his work without allowing the work to affect his life.
No one character is all good or all evil, and Chekhov depicts these protagonists so that we sympathize and question their actions and words. He presents several takes on love and the artist, allowing his audience to take what they will from the examples that may or may not mirror their own lives and those of their loved ones. All four characters pursue art to some degree because it boosts their ego to be admired and respected for their work. Treplyev in particular longs equally for admiration for his talents and for his self. His ego is wounded by his mother and by Nina. Success in love and in writing is equally important to him though he is successful in neither arena.
Trigorin has the satisfaction of success in his writing, though he is never satisfied, and as he says, always starts a new story once the old one is finished. In love, Trigorin pursues Nina because he feels he might substitute the satisfaction and sense of completion that he lacks in his work with a love that would fulfill the void he felt as a youth. In some sense the satisfaction these characters obtain from being artists becomes equivalent with their feeling of being loved.
Unrequited love is the structural glue that sticks most of the characters in The Sea Gull together. Medvedenko loves Masha, but Masha loves Treplev. Treplev does not love Masha back, he loves Nina. Nina loves Treplev briefly but then falls madly in love with Trigorin. Arkadina loves Trigorin but loses his affections to Nina. Paulina loves Dorn (Chuck Spencer) though she is married to Shamrayev (Bill Mages).
Chekhov emphasizes the mundane in life repeatedly throughout the play. The symbol of the seagull at first represents freedom and security of the lake to Nina, next after Treplev shoots it, the seagull symbolizes how dead he will be to Nina. In the final act, Nina calls herself the seagull depicting her destruction by a loved one (Trigorin). The seagull also serves as a foreshadowing device. Nina fulfills Trigorin's prophesy of destroying her just like the seagull and Treplyev kills himself in Nina's honor at the end of the play when she still does not love him.
Chekhovian has come to mean “accepting the idea that things will not change.” In other words, as Nina says, “nothing happens, just a lot of words are spoken.” This is not true in Raven’ production were the characters quickly become empathic as we are engrossed with their passions. I especially like the work of JoAnn Montemurro as the flamboyant vain actress/mother Arkadina, Paul Dunckel’s Trigorin vivid insights into the writers’ compulsions and Tom Porter Sorin who regrets his life. Melissa Nedell’s spooky Masha was a treat while the captivating Cora Vander Broek plays Nina with a haunting romanticism. Tom Bateman was marvelous as Treplev giving him depth of character necessary to explain his self destructive desires. The Sea Gull enchants us into the artists’ world as it reflects on life, love, self evaluation.
Highly Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast
Date reviewed: March 25
|
