Thomas Ostermeier’s radical contemporary production begins with an actor driving a buggy on stage. He takes out his guitar, approaches a standing microphone and sings Billy Bragg’s “The Milkman of Human Kindness”. My heart sank.
When Chekhov was asked in 1896 how he would like The Seagull staged, he replied as well as possible. He wanted more comedy. He did not like Stanislavsky’s melancholy and sluggish production.
“In life”, Chekhov said, “everything is mixed up: the profound with the trite, the tragic with the comic.” It is this knife-edge between laughter and tears that has made his plays so popular.
The Seagull, a great hymn to time passing and opportunities missed, has a record number of love triangles. Everybody is in love with the wrong person. The characters – bored, bitter, jealous – are very unhappy.
Konstantin, a young unperformed playwright, loves Nina, a stage-struck girl, who loves Trigorin, a famous writer, who is loved by Arkadina, Konstantin’s mother, a famous actress. Trigorin deserts Arkadina for Nina and then, having fathered her child, deserts her, returning to Arkadina.
I have seen the play far better acted and in greater depth, too. Ostermeier admits he is not a big fan of Chekhov. I found his self-regarding production very distracting and suspect much of it will be inaccessible for those who do not know the play.
The set is a very wide-open space. An enormous white cyclorama fills the entire back wall. There is a patch of cornfield and deck chairs centre stage. The cast is in modern dress and regularly speak into microphones addressing the audience directly.
There are lot of jokes about theatre and its irrelevance and the exorbitant price of tickets which go down well and produce a lot of laughter from a knowing audience.
Cate Blanchett gives a big and ridiculously exaggerated performance as Arkadina; and she even tap dances and does the splits. Tom Burke as Trigorin wears short trousers and mumbles through his big monologue. Nothing is made of the great comic scene, when Arkadina degrades herself, overpraising her lover’s talents.
And so, it goes on. So much is missing. This raw and very deliberately non-Chekhovian production is going to irritate many theatregoers.
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