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The Seagull
Playwright - Anton
Chekhov, version by Tom Stoppard
Director - Rimas Tuminas
Designer - Adomas Jacovskis
Composer - Latenas Faustas
Lighting Designer - Richard Moffat
Company - Dundee Rep Resident Company
Venue - Dundee Rep Theatre 01382 223530 Tay Square 7 mins walk to
train station Scotland's only ensemble company on 3 year contracts producing
varied and excellent theatre.
Good Restaurant and bar. Modern theatre
Dates - Previews 8 & 9 October at 7:30pm £4.95
10 - 27 October at 7:30pm not Sun or Mons
Matinees 13 & 20 at 2:30pm at £5.95
NB Changed Start Time 7:30pm for evening performances ends about
10:40pm
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Get thee to Dundee! This Seagull's in perfect flight.
The Seagull - Dundee Rep Production Konstantin's audience and
their chairs incl Andrew West as Shamraev, John Buick as Sorin Irene
MacDougall as Arkadina and Rodney Matthew as Trigorin
© Antony Brannan 2001
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Fine plays are not just excellent texts, it is by the silences, the movements
and the actors that directors bring these plays to extraordinary, vibrant
life. Director Rimas Tuminas and his Lithuanian countrymen with the great
unison that is the Dundee Rep's ensemble of actors have created a rare,
soaring example of theatre's art and magic, unlike the seagull of the
title this production has no bullet of destruction to halt its exquisite
movement.
Chekhov's play with a writer Trigorin, his sometimes lover the actress
Arkadina, and her son attempting to be a playwright Konstantin, has in
Chekhov's own words a lot of talk about literature, not much action
and five bushels of love. Oh the love in this play! One coil of longing
goes like this - the schoolmaster loves Masha the farm manager's daughter,
she loves Konstantin who loves Nina, who seems to love him when the play
opens. When Nina arrives in the Sorin household to perform in Konstantin's
play she talks and moves ceaselessly, awash in the heady hormones and
eager energy of a girl just realising the power of her womanhood. As the
play continues you realise all of them - visitors, servants and the Sorins
themselves have some form of love which is painful and unrequited.
There are many intense images in this production, the little girl howls
unconsoled, picking up all the agonised, frustrated desire. There's Trigorin
moving like a wind-up monkey, bending in the middle to conceal an aroused
part of his anatomy as he squirms in the worshiping gaze of Nina. Medvedenko,
the always sidelined schoolmaster reducing himself in stature more and
more even after Masha marries him. The heady throwing of cases when Nina
and Trigorin find out he is not going away and the superb departure for
Moscow when the cases transform into the carriage that's whipped on its
way by Sorin's more and more controlling farm manager.
When in Act 1 the household processes out carrying chairs to watch the
play and gaze out across the lake and at us beyond, Tuminas's production
grips. It grips with the certainly that this is how the play is, how it
should be, how its creator meant it to be. We the audience float in the
lake beyond the shore, float in the dark, in that extraordinary space
where sometimes great art happens. The thrill it awakes in us makes tears
and laughter hover entrancingly, knowing in this production they will
be released and we will delight to release them.
Great productions - and this is a great production - of plays give the
full wingspan of the drama power so the whole of the production resonates
and communicates on many levels, moving refreshing air into what are too
often still corners. Dundee Rep's resident company shows how rewarding
the long-term ensemble experience is for us all, whether we are involved
in the theatre making before the curtain goes up, the magic on the stage
or the ultimate magic in the audience. I very much hope this production
will soar again and again, and be toured in Scotland and beyond - its
quality demands it.
© Thelma Good 13 October 2001
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