THE SEAGULL
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There was much to register. Chekhov’s most lyrical, plot-driven work depicts two young artists, aspiring writer Constantine and ardent actress Nina, who find their futures suffocated by their smug elders: Constantine’s life-sucking actress mother Irina Arkadina and Trigorin, a writer romantically interested in Nina who reduces life to antiseptic fiction. Jaded and disgusted with themselves, Arkadina and Trigorin use their broken dreams to justify their selfish acts, seizing on any pleasure to make up for lost joy–which is just what made them fail in the first place.
Constantine’s thoughtless killing of a sea gull in the first act is a sacrifice Nina takes all too personally–one reason why The Seagull ends with tragic decisiveness, as if it were an Ibsen play, not in the protracted fade-outs of Chekhov’s later works.
The Seagull doesn’t have to be preserved in amber. But if you mean to transport it anywhere outside of Russia–something not even David Mamet dared to do with his pedestrian The Cherry Orchard–there’d better be a method to your move. This Maine hybrid lacks the urgency to seem anything more than a detour. Because this play is universal, leave it alone–don’t mess with the writer’s hard-earned realism and obvious intent.
