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.
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