Review: (Montreal) The Seagull

Lucy Peacock, Diane D'Aquila (photo by Andrée Lanthier)

Hinton's Chekhov's Seagull 
by Caitlin Murphy

In the program for The Segal Centre's production of The Seagull, adapter and director Peter Hinton's name precedes and looms large over playwright Anton Chekhov's. A bold statement reflecting a bold stamp: transplanting the play to a contemporary Canadian context, cross-gendering characters, and playing fast and loose with Chekhov's text. All of which could have gone very very wrong. And didn't. The Segal Centre's first full-length production of a Chekhov play is rich, quirky, vibrant, and deeply satisfying.  

As the evening began, I feared that the winks to Canadian culture – name dropping the likes of Jian Ghomeshi and Christopher Plummer – would quickly wear thin. But soon enough the self-referencing settled down, and Hinton's modern bent felt much more natural and fruitful.

Sunday Feature: Peter Hinton on The Seagull

(photo by David Cooper)

The Seagull at the Segal
I have created my own adaptation of the play in an effort to provide a theatrical language that is fresh and modern
by Peter Hinton

Peter Hinton is an award winning playwright and director. From 2005-2012, he was Artistic Director of English Theatre at Canada's National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Peter was an associate artist at The Stratford Festival for seven seasons, directing The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare’s Universe, The Odyssey, Fanny Kemble, The Duchess of Malfi, Into the Woods, and all three parts of his own verse trilogy entitled,The Swanne. Recently Peter directed the acclaimed productions of Andrew Bovell’s When The Rain Stops Falling and Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, both for the Shaw Festival. For the Segal Centre, he directed A Night in November by Marie Jones, Buried Child by Sam Shepard, and his own adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House. Peter was the 2012 English recipient of the National Theatre School of Canada’s Gascon/Thomas Award for significant achievement in Canadian Theatre, and in 2009, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.

For the last few years, Paul Flicker and I have talked about a production for the Segal Centre that could embody the considerable strengths of its vision and mandate. We wanted to collaborate on a production that would be unique and relevant – combining the very best of innovation and tradition, the classical and the modern – and somehow be both thought-provoking and seriously entertaining. We both love plays that tackle the complexity of the human condition, and at the same time are very funny. We thought about a production that would provide an opportunity for wonderful design, strong writing and great parts for actors. 

Both Paul and I have a deep love for the Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov, who in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century re-imagined the way we see ourselves on stage. Chekhov was a true pioneer of the modern theatre, his plays present life with all its ambiguities and indecision. The people who inhabit a play by Chekhov are driven, haunted, frustrated members of the middle class; doctors, accountants and school teachers, who are often contrasted with actors, writers and philosophers.  Together they share a sense of deep yearning; people torn between an idealized past and the promise of a better future. The plays of Anton Chekhov are characterized by a strong sense of mood, a spare and often ambiguous narrative – and above all, a singular blend of comedy and tragedy. In Chekhov, the tragic and the comic often lie side by side – creating a theatre that is vibrant, surprising and full of life.  

Appreciation: Peter Hinton

Farewell, Peter Hinton!

What is lost at NAC

by Jim Murchison

As the the capital region says goodbye to Peter Hinton, the trepidation Ottawa had at his arrival after Marti Maraden's departure is a distant memory. Make no mistake when you invest 7 or 8 years of your life in a community, your replacement is looked on with suspicion. At the time that Peter Hinton took over the helm I was an insider on the marketing end of things. Arts Marketing had a contract to sell subscriptions and I was a member of that team. For the most part, we were calling people that already had subscribed and I had to really push my points across to convince them that a Peter Hinton season was worth subscribing to. Peter Hinton made a point of dropping by the subscription office to give us an idea of his direction and his plans. Having said all that, the number of people that didn't want to subscribe, compared to the number of people that felt Ottawa was losing one of the best assets the NAC ever had in Marti Maraden was about 3 to 1 and not in Mr. Hinton's favour.