The Edinburgh festival 2003 -- EIF Review

EIF Review

The Seagull

Playwright Anton Chekhov. In an English Translation by Peter Stein.
Director Peter Stein.
Company Co-production by Edinburgh International Festival & Russian Drama Theatre of Riga, Lativa.
Venue Kings Theatre.
Address Leven Street Edinburgh.
Reviewer Thelma Good.

Jodhi May as Nina in The Seagull
photograher Douglas Robertson

Heading the first entirely English speaking cast that world renowned director Peter Stein has directed are Fiona Shaw in the role of Arkadina, the actress who returns to her country estate with Iain Glen as her lover Trigorin. It's the first time Stein has directed The Seagull - he directed The Cherry Orchard in German in the 1997 EIF's programme. This major production's set, costumes and director will also be seen with a new cast in Russian at the Russian Drama Theatre of Riga.

As Konstantin Arkadina's son Cillian Murphy gives us a young man, who could be a unrecognised genius, attractive and tender, he clearly has the skin too few of a creative. The young girl who acts in Konstantin's avant-garde play, Nina, is a woman who steps into another world during the play and is irrevocably changed. In a sun filled early scene she copies Arkindina's movements, restoring genuine youth to the older Arkadina's practised actress's stances. Later in the last scene she returns a hollow shell, Jodhi May captures the zesty hope of one and the bone weary, mind anguish of the other. Glen's Trigorin exudes the vigorous externally convincing certainty of a successful man, a man easy to fall under the spell of. Often Trigorin's attraction is hard to understand, there's none of that problem in this portrayal, pointing up the deep piercing aching hole that is Nina's reality in the final scene. Shaw's Arkadina has the febrile brittleness of a woman who trades on her look and talents but can't bring herself to be truly human or motherly. Each costume she wears and the way each move is considered are just the right side of histrionic.

Cillian Murphy as Konstantin and Fiona Shaw as Arkadina in The Seagull
photograher Douglas Robertson

A real sense of the vastness of Russia is evoked by the set whose large video screen gives us images of sky, lakeside, interiors and a stupendous thunder and lightening storm. Arkadina's son's rough theatre space is being built in the wordless pre-scene, when the play begins, as Stein often likes them to, not with a clear start but with the audience still talking as we become aware that something is happening on stage. He rouses our interest by drawing our attention not with a full on start but with a more enduring attraction of the subtle flirt of "look something is starting to happen before your very eyes". In later scenes furniture is rolled in and positioned on strong diagonals, on the stripped back King's stage the enormity of distance created echoes that of Chekhov's Russia and the gulf between his characters. The screen and Kostantin's theatre move around so that the screen is always an intense part of the scenography while the theatre is withdrawn to the back or the sides, an uncomfortable memory of hopes dashed that you try put out of sight but is never out of the mind's eye.

Chekhov meant The Seagull as a comedy, he so described it, its bitter humour sparked by the power of seeing the ghastly, idiotic way we humans love in vain or carelessly or not when we should. But Stein loses some of this, the direction underplays the play's ironic organ keys, as a result the play lacks full emotional engagement and resonances. When there are comic moments in this production too often we laugh just at the characters and not also at our own shortcomings, because they are as we ourselves are. But what is sharply, searingly visible in this production are the characters' unassuaged longings and the horror of the unexploded bombs that people lay before each others and that none of them do enough to defuse. The cast are all strong, from the stars to the tiny unspeaking roles the connection with the audience is well sustained.

This is the third major Seagull production I've seen in recent years, he has more theatrical life going out into the auditorium than the Burgtheater's seen at the 2001 EIF, but doesn't soar as high as Dundee Rep's amazing production directed by Lithuanian Rimas Tuminas who got the bitter self recognition of the play note perfect.
© Thelma Good 12 August 2003 - Published on www.EdinburghGuide.com
Runs to 23 August except 17 August at 19:30, Matinees 14, 16, 20 & 23 August at 14:00.


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