The Seagull
by Anton Chekov
Translated by Michael Frayn
Directed by Sara Randall
September 21st - 28th, 2002
The Tower Theatre performing at the Tower Theatre, Canonbury
Also presented at the Theatre in the Pines,
Rockport, Mass, USA, October 10th - 13th, 2002
Cast List
Irina Arkadina, an actress : Jill Batty
Konstantin, her son : Craig B Carruthers
Sorin, her brother : Tom Tillery
Nina, daughter of a wealthy landowner : Ginita Jiminez
Shamrayev, Sorin's steward : Colin Dent
Polina, his wife : Kay Perversi
Masha, his daughter : Simona Hughes
Trigorin, a novelist : Richard Thornton
Dr Dorn : Alexander Gordon Wood
Simon Medvedenko, a teacher : Chris Howell
Yakov, a workman : Steven Hyndman
Grushenka, a maid : Nathalie Lake
Production Team
Director : Sara Randall
Set and Costume Designer : Lea Tunesi
Lighting Designer : Robert Myer
Sound Designer : Phillip Ley
Stage Managers : Jacqui de Prez, Ann Watchorn
ASMs : Celia Reynolds, Margaret Ley
Lighting operator : Elaine Sanders
Sound operators : Anna Anderson, Juliette Daigre
Wardrobe : Kay Perversi, Sheila Burbidge, Celia Reynolds
Set construction : Michael Allaway, Keith Syrett, Alan Wilkinson, Hilary Allan, Andrew Peregrine, Jo Farchy, Isabel Farbhy, John Feather
& members of the cast and crew
In-house review by Trevor Williams
Trevor
Williams has been a member of the Company for
more than 40 years as performer, artistic
director and chairman. As a student at Cambridge
he was a member of the Marlowe Society and the
Footlights.
Translations of Chekhov's plays are now so well established in the canon of
classical English drama that we tend to treat them as part of our own
heritage and so as worthy and as accessible as Henry V or Major Barbara.
However they spring from a society that was markedly different from England
- la fin du siècle. We may recognise in them the core of common emotions and
conflicts, but the means of expressing them is alien. The Seagull is a
comedy ending with a suicide and to enter the mind that created it requires
historical as well as artistic imagination.
How far should an authentic Russia of 1896 be attempted and would a modern
English audience be better served by what amounts to an adaptation to modern
responses? It largely comes down to the tone of the acting. How much
passion? How many laughs?
And those questions raise another beyond the divide between us and Chekhov's
audience and indeed shared by us with them; what was Chekhov's motive in
writing as he did? From peasant stock, he started writing to fund his
medical studies, producing in seven years over four hundred pieces, mainly
for the press, and then he practised medicine, conscientiously and with
compassion, keeping his eyes wide open to suffering and deprivation.
He wrote, "I have no doubt that the study of medical sciences has had an
important influence on my literary work" in which "the scientific method has
always kept me on my guard."
One may venture that, in the light of the true suffering he saw in his
medical work, he satirised the exaggerated strife of his prosperous
characters, but with an acuteness of scientific observation that raised
satire to a tragedy which might move his equally prosperous audience to
compassion towards all afflicted humnity. Mockery and pity are strangely
mixed by Chekhov with supreme artistry. Shaw, Ibsen or Granville-Barker he is
not.
Our production by Sara Randall rightly did not moderate the play's harsh
humour and passionate outbursts and was weil served by Lea Tunesi's sets and
costumes. Her beautifully glistenIng abstract lake made a bold assertion of
modernity without disrupting the sense of another place from UK 2002 and the
interiors were true to the period.
The costumes were excellent and generally worn with convincing ease, except
that Trigorin's trousers were slipping down and Dr. Dorn's hat looked rather
odd. These are things which actors should look after themselves ...
The most readily accessible aspect of Chekhov's genius is his gift for
drawing a character in a few lines of inconsequential dialogue and the
challenge to the actor is to re-create that character in all its clarity
without distortion and yet within the limits of his own voice and persona
and then to adjust the portrayal to create a true relationship with the
other actors, who are engaged in the same process.
A true Nina and Konstantin will vary according to the playing of the other
part. It was in the struggle to achieve such true relationships between true
characters, that Stanislavsky developed his method and every director has a
vital contribution to make to the realisation of the text.
This assumes an equality of skill in the cast, which is hard to achieve in
a small company, but within that limitation, Sara Randall suceeeded in
bringing to us lively scenes of full characters engaged in convincing
relationships, which, despite the familiarity of the play and the misery of
its story held the attention and were invigorating to experience.
The central interest of the play is in the friendship and separation of
Konstantin and Nina and they were finely played by Craig B. Carruthers and
Ginita Jiminez. They laid open the charm, vulnerability and frankness of
young love and its bitter ending. The coolest spectator must surely have
been moved by these performances.
As a foil to these well rounded characters, Chekhov gives full vent to his
satiric bent in the creation of the problematIc couple, Masha and
Medvedenko. Simona Hughes and Chris Howell resisted any urge to caricature
and created a true bond between them, however idiosyncratic, which threw
another light on youth's struggle for fulfilment in love. His performance
was admirably restrained and hers was admirably expressive.
Hovering around these four unhappy people and not giving them any help are
various ageing objects of Chekhov's caustic appraisal. Tom Tillery was
entirely convincing as Sorin, covering his egoism with an invalid's rug of
self-deprecation. Colin Dent's aggressive loquacious Shamrayev was as
exasperating as intended and well delivered, though rather too much out
front, in pantomime manner.
The interesting Dr. Dorn, who understands and sympathises with everyone but
has retired not only from work but from responsibility, is a subtle part
which was not fully realised by Alexander Gordon Wood. He maintained the
character's personality but lacked the skill to transmit Chekhov's ironies.
Richard Thornton as Trigorin looked and sounded the part but presented a
bafflingly wholesome and cheerful, yet insignificant, character. The
weakness of Trigorin's duplicity and the authority of his success were
little to be seen. It is a difficult, elusive role as the character is
largely drawn from descriptions of it in other actors' parts and it requires
imaginative attention to the whole play to reflect this in the quite brief
scenes the role is given.
Confronted by her bland lover, Jill Batty's Irina Arkadina was hardly
challenged by an equal, and she took the opportunity or was given little
choice but to display the coarse egotism of the part in all its vivid
theatricality. She looked splendid and moved superbly and her voice crashed
into son, lover and servants with a slightly too equal vigour, but if the
anxiety of lost youth, on which Trigorin should play, was missing, we
certainly saw how the pursuit of art mlght be the death of love.
This is a difficult play, which has been attempted time and again by some of
the world's greatest actors and companies. We cannot expect to compete with
them in refinement and consistency, but it is much to the credit of Sara
Randall and the company that those who saw it at the Tower, many for the
first time, were given an account of it which was true to its spirit, clear
and vigorous in presentation and emotionally valid.
The Seagull
by Anton Chekov |
|
|
September 21st - 28th, 2002 |
The Tower Theatre performing at the Tower Theatre, Canonbury |
Also presented at the Theatre in the Pines, Rockport, Mass, USA, October 10th - 13th, 2002 | |
|
Cast List
|
Production Team
|
In-house review by Trevor Williams
Trevor Williams has been a member of the Company for more than 40 years as performer, artistic director and chairman. As a student at Cambridge he was a member of the Marlowe Society and the Footlights.
Translations of Chekhov's plays are now so well established in the canon of
classical English drama that we tend to treat them as part of our own
heritage and so as worthy and as accessible as Henry V or Major Barbara.
However they spring from a society that was markedly different from England
- la fin du siècle. We may recognise in them the core of common emotions and
conflicts, but the means of expressing them is alien. The Seagull is a
comedy ending with a suicide and to enter the mind that created it requires
historical as well as artistic imagination.
How far should an authentic Russia of 1896 be attempted and would a modern
English audience be better served by what amounts to an adaptation to modern
responses? It largely comes down to the tone of the acting. How much
passion? How many laughs?
And those questions raise another beyond the divide between us and Chekhov's
audience and indeed shared by us with them; what was Chekhov's motive in
writing as he did? From peasant stock, he started writing to fund his
medical studies, producing in seven years over four hundred pieces, mainly
for the press, and then he practised medicine, conscientiously and with
compassion, keeping his eyes wide open to suffering and deprivation.
He wrote, "I have no doubt that the study of medical sciences has had an
important influence on my literary work" in which "the scientific method has
always kept me on my guard."
One may venture that, in the light of the true suffering he saw in his
medical work, he satirised the exaggerated strife of his prosperous
characters, but with an acuteness of scientific observation that raised
satire to a tragedy which might move his equally prosperous audience to
compassion towards all afflicted humnity. Mockery and pity are strangely
mixed by Chekhov with supreme artistry. Shaw, Ibsen or Granville-Barker he is
not.
Our production by Sara Randall rightly did not moderate the play's harsh
humour and passionate outbursts and was weil served by Lea Tunesi's sets and
costumes. Her beautifully glistenIng abstract lake made a bold assertion of
modernity without disrupting the sense of another place from UK 2002 and the
interiors were true to the period.
The costumes were excellent and generally worn with convincing ease, except
that Trigorin's trousers were slipping down and Dr. Dorn's hat looked rather
odd. These are things which actors should look after themselves ...
The most readily accessible aspect of Chekhov's genius is his gift for
drawing a character in a few lines of inconsequential dialogue and the
challenge to the actor is to re-create that character in all its clarity
without distortion and yet within the limits of his own voice and persona
and then to adjust the portrayal to create a true relationship with the
other actors, who are engaged in the same process.
A true Nina and Konstantin will vary according to the playing of the other
part. It was in the struggle to achieve such true relationships between true
characters, that Stanislavsky developed his method and every director has a
vital contribution to make to the realisation of the text.
This assumes an equality of skill in the cast, which is hard to achieve in
a small company, but within that limitation, Sara Randall suceeeded in
bringing to us lively scenes of full characters engaged in convincing
relationships, which, despite the familiarity of the play and the misery of
its story held the attention and were invigorating to experience.
The central interest of the play is in the friendship and separation of
Konstantin and Nina and they were finely played by Craig B. Carruthers and
Ginita Jiminez. They laid open the charm, vulnerability and frankness of
young love and its bitter ending. The coolest spectator must surely have
been moved by these performances.
As a foil to these well rounded characters, Chekhov gives full vent to his
satiric bent in the creation of the problematIc couple, Masha and
Medvedenko. Simona Hughes and Chris Howell resisted any urge to caricature
and created a true bond between them, however idiosyncratic, which threw
another light on youth's struggle for fulfilment in love. His performance
was admirably restrained and hers was admirably expressive.
Hovering around these four unhappy people and not giving them any help are
various ageing objects of Chekhov's caustic appraisal. Tom Tillery was
entirely convincing as Sorin, covering his egoism with an invalid's rug of
self-deprecation. Colin Dent's aggressive loquacious Shamrayev was as
exasperating as intended and well delivered, though rather too much out
front, in pantomime manner.
The interesting Dr. Dorn, who understands and sympathises with everyone but
has retired not only from work but from responsibility, is a subtle part
which was not fully realised by Alexander Gordon Wood. He maintained the
character's personality but lacked the skill to transmit Chekhov's ironies.
Richard Thornton as Trigorin looked and sounded the part but presented a
bafflingly wholesome and cheerful, yet insignificant, character. The
weakness of Trigorin's duplicity and the authority of his success were
little to be seen. It is a difficult, elusive role as the character is
largely drawn from descriptions of it in other actors' parts and it requires
imaginative attention to the whole play to reflect this in the quite brief
scenes the role is given.
Confronted by her bland lover, Jill Batty's Irina Arkadina was hardly
challenged by an equal, and she took the opportunity or was given little
choice but to display the coarse egotism of the part in all its vivid
theatricality. She looked splendid and moved superbly and her voice crashed
into son, lover and servants with a slightly too equal vigour, but if the
anxiety of lost youth, on which Trigorin should play, was missing, we
certainly saw how the pursuit of art mlght be the death of love.
This is a difficult play, which has been attempted time and again by some of
the world's greatest actors and companies. We cannot expect to compete with
them in refinement and consistency, but it is much to the credit of Sara
Randall and the company that those who saw it at the Tower, many for the
first time, were given an account of it which was true to its spirit, clear
and vigorous in presentation and emotionally valid.