Review: (Toronto / Theatre) The Seagull

Patrick Garrow, Rena Palley (Photo by Katherine Holland)

The Sound and the Fury and the Acting
Madness and Method are Apparent in The Chekhov Collective’s The Seagull
by Spencer Malthouse
@spencemalthouse 

A man taking a restful sojourn in the country finds a happy, carefree seagull. Having nothing better to do he destroys it. 

Now imagine that you are the seagull. Imagine that you fall in love with this man and that he slowly destroys you crushing first your dreams, then your reputation, and then your heart. You are left cold, broken, and dying. 

Now imagine you are a man who loved that seagull so completely that your despair at her suffering stifles your soul.  

But it’s a comedy!

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.  

Review: (Winnipeg) The Seagull

Tom Keenan (photo: Bruce Monk)

I'm More Than a Bird

Unspoken regret is a Russian invention.
by Edgar Governo

It seems somewhat mystifying at first that the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre would schedule an entire playwright festival around Anton Chekhov, as he was a much more prolific writer of short stories--his three other major plays (The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, and Uncle Vanya) are also being staged as part of ChekhovFest, but the bulk of the productions are more tangential adaptations and shows "inspired by" his body of work. Since Chekhov himself was continuously concerned with questioning the traditional art forms that had come before him, however, perhaps this is fitting.

The Seagull itself is concerned with these questions even more directly, as most of the main characters are people who produce (or wish they could produce) celebrated works of art. Boris Trigorin (Tom Rooney) is a noted writer of short stories engaged in love affairs with both the divaesque Irina Arkadina (Sharon Bajer) and later the aspiring actress Nina Zarechnaya (Bethany Jillard), who in turn is the object of affection for aspiring writer Constantin Treplyov (Tom Keenan), Arkadina's son. All of these artists and the others in their circle are at the estate of Arkadina's brother, Peter Sorin (Harry Nelken), who has retired after a long career in the Russian bureaucracy but wishes he could have spent his time writing instead.