The Seagull
Chichester Festival Theatre
until Saturday 15th November
The moon rises above a fading country estate. Guests gather to watch a play put on by the young Konstantin. Enthralled by his mother, the once-celebrated actress Arkadina, who holds court at the estate, these characters churn and weave their own dramas of heartache, jealousy and artistic fulfilment as Chekhov’s masterpiece unfolds. The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh’s production visits Chichester Festival Theatre as part of its Winter season and audiences are in for a treat!
Helmed by James Brining, adapted by Mike Poulton and starring Caroline Quentin as the illustrious yet conniving Arkadina, The Seagull is a masterful telling. Chekhov’s play – like all of his works – is awash with symbolism but Brining’s direction keeps the action buoyant and lively, tuning the allegory to the performance and never the other way around. The scenes roll and fold into one another seamlessly, the action purring as the characters skim against one another, like stones across a lake. Poulton’s adaptation brings Chekhov’s humour to the fore without ever sacrificing the substance that anchors it. An astute ensemble trips its way deftly through the script, handling with aplomb a skirmish of Coward-esque witticisms and jibes that runs under, over and through each scene. But these taunts only ever thinly mask deeply entrenched insecurities and it is when the veneer is pulled back that this production truly shines.
Harmony Rose-Bremner is effervescent as Nina, with an infectious energy that lends a seemingly unsustainable franticness to both delight and despair. Elsewhere, Irene Allan wraps Polina in a cascade of self-pity, sometimes playful and sometimes hard to endure, whilst Dyfan Dwyfor roams self-assured as Trigorin, a pristine suit that spews insufferable nuggets of would-be wisdom, detached and indifferent as he scrutinises the lives of others. “You write about everything,” Masha berates him, “but you don’t know much about anything.”
And, at the centre of it all, Arkadina (Quentin) and her son Konstantin (played by an accomplished Lorn Macdonald) grapple and whirl in a maelstrom of their own making. A generational conflict of jealousy, under-achievement and creeping irrelevance simmers beneath their hardened exteriors. Quentin is imperious as the manipulative matriarch, every word is measured and her smiles barbed. Opposite her, Macdonald never once misses a beat as her persecuted offspring, at times sycophantic and at others defiant. Their tempestuous relationship pulls all into its orbit and when their jealousies finally overboil into a torrent of insults and abuse, its consequences are chiefly borne by those around them. Their dissatisfaction is all-consuming and wholly contagious.
As they hurtle towards the event horizon of their own downfall the setting of each scene shifts – from lake, to garden, to dining area, to cramped sitting room – the performance area growing smaller each time. The walls close in on the malcontents and there is less room to outmanoeuvre the consequences of their actions and, subsequently, those they have impacted upon.
And, of course, the infamous Chekhov’s gunshot. In Brining’s production it is understated and all the more powerful for it, the production succeeding in breathing new life into an oft-parodied trope. It is an apt allegory for the show itself, as this production, neither concept-laden nor puritanical in its adherence to the playwright, reinvents the play for the twenty-first century by simply affording Chekhov’s storytelling the room to stretch its wings. And that is what allows The Seagull to soar.
The Seagull is currently playing at Chichester Festival Theatre until Saturday 15th November.
Reviewer: Ethan Taylor