The Seagull

How easy it is, Doctor, to be a philosopher on paper and, how difficult in real life.


The Seagull was a delightful exploration of binary contrasts, a meditation rocking the countryside as a mélange of folk gather by the shore of a lake for some Slavic R&R: adultery and suicide. I am only kidding. Echoing Hemingway, one would imagine all of Mother Rus hanging themselves judging by the pages of its marvelous literature. The contrast between urban and rural is explored as is the space between art and labor. Regret happens to ruminate and the servants receive a whole ruble to divide amongst themselves. There's a play-within-the-play which somehow struck me as did Bergman's Through A Glass Darkly and everyone appears to be quoting Hamlet. show more Substitute a sea gull for an albatross and pen a portrait of the artist (or author) as lecher and Bob's your uncle (but not Vanya). show less

I saw a brilliant production of this play on Broadway (brought over from London) a few years ago, so I guess I wouldn't say read it, I would say, if you can see a first class production of it that gets the humor and doesn't make Kostya a clueless sad sack, sell part of your book collection to get a ticket. For a writer, it's all about your worst nightmares. For anyone, the final scene between the two failed young lovers, and what follows, is devastating.

But reading it is worthwhile too. Just pick a good translation and remember that the author had a very dry and brutal sense of humor.

As a writer, I am always in awe of Chekhov. His characters, his dramatic structures, his settings, there is nobody like him. He was so good, in every way, show more and apparently once said he could toss off a salable short story about anything, about the ashtray in front of him. He was boasting, but I'm sure it was true. show less

This is a review of the performance I saw on May 28, 2011 in Atlanta, and not of the actual play as written.

Chekhov is one of my favorite writers and it pains me to see him performed in this way. It also pains me to trash an Atlanta production of a serious play (I do want to be encouraging, afterall). Atlanta doesn’t often perform Chekhov, or anything halfway serious for that matter. It’s like we’re so afraid of boring the audience we have to make everything into an easy joke, which is why we never put on serious plays. But even when we do tackle Chekhov, we’re still going for those easy laughs.

Yes, I know it’s a comedy. But not in this way. Chekhov was subtle. Somehow this performance managed to make all the characters show more one-dimensional, which is not a word I would otherwise associate with Chekhov. The acting was horrible. There seemed to be entirely too much thought put into the set pieces and the movement of the actors around the stage (and the clever things they did in the background of the main action), and entirely too little attention paid to how the lines were actually delivered.

I don’t know how to write about bad acting. I can write about bad writing, but bad acting I do not have the vocabulary for. It just felt unnatural to my ears. It seems to me that there wasn’t enough attention paid to the silences between the lines, or the pauses where the thought comes before the words. It felt like a torrent of words without a real person behind them.

Anyway, I went home and read a few pages of this play (though in a different translation) just to make sure it wasn’t Chekhov’s fault. It wasn’t.

If anyone from this production is reading this, then I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings and please excuse my harshness. Don't stop trying to tackle hard plays, even if you fail every once in a while. If it’s any consolation, at least the Creative Loafing gave you guys a glowing review. Perhaps I don’t know what I’m talking about. show less

Summary (on some review-page): The Seagull by Anton Chekhov is a slice-of-life drama set in the Russian countryside at the end of the 19th century. The cast of characters is dissatisfied with their lives. Some desire love. Some desire success. Some desire artistic genius. No one, however, ever seems to attain happiness.

I’m a big fan of L.A. Theatre Works - but not even this fine audiobook-production with Calista Flockhart could save this “self-occupied” play.

A lot of modern existential ideas are at play here - a psychological story about self-centered artists who are unable to connect with each other or get any fulfillment out of life.

I’m now wondering if I should listen to more of Chekhov’s plays.

This is what I found in my experience: some plays read well - just like any novel, while others have to be performed to be enjoyed fully. To me, "The Seagull" is definitely of the latter type. Even though I've just re-read this play in its original language (my mother tongue) and should have been smitten by Chekhov's prose, I wasn't. Ideas in the dialogues rang true, but the dialogues themselves didn't - again, on stage they probably would. The infusion of drama (some would say melodrama?) and the symbolism are, of course, undeniable. My favorite part was Trigorin's monologue about the essence of a writer's life.

Doesn't succeed terribly well as a comedy OR a tragedy, although I found it fairly depressing. I don't understand how it was meant as a comedy at all.

Note: in addition to reading it, I watched a performance on YouTube:

http://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=qiPfPzt8azc

I found that this play had several similarities with the last Chekhov play I read, "Uncle Vanya". There is even the young man who tries to shoot himself. In this one, he tries again later and succeeds which made me come away with a much darker impression. Watching the performance did help me with this play but overall, Chekhov feels too bleak for me. I will come back and try him again some day but not right away.