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The
Seagull
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| Chris Wilkinson | |
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'No More Masterpieces,' said Artaud. 'Hear hear,' says I. Peter Stein's latest offering at the International Festival bears all the hallmarks of a show that has sunk under the weight of its own importance. At three and a half epic hours, this production is clearly meant to be a show that revels in Chekhov's genius as a writer, one that doesn't pay any attention to silly details like communicating with its audience. What makes the failure of this production so remarkable is that on paper it really ought to work. Stein himself has been described as the greatest living director of Chekhov, and the show boasts some very astute casting. Fiona Shaw seems made for the part of the flamboyant diva Arkadina, yet her performance does little more than create a shallow egotist with a tendency to hysteria. And hotshot Cillian Murphy should also be ideal as the angry passionate young writer Konstantin, yet instead he turns him into a whingeing schoolboy. Only Michael Pennington really shines: he plays Doctor Yevgeny Sergeyevitch Dorn with a wit and subtlety that is particularly refreshing given the lack of these qualities elsewhere in the production. Much of the staging is deeply unsophisticated. There are some nice moments - the contrast for instance between the fairly inconspicuous start to the show with the actors setting things up as the audience enter, and the huge unexpected thunderclap at the opening of the second half. Yet many of the directorial conceits are just cheap. Stein highlights the 'theatricality' of putting on a play about putting on a play, by having the back wall of the theatre exposed and naked; he has monologues delivered directly to the audience in a spotlight. These are not clever ideas. The show is for the most part an inert affair, the actors plod through the script, rarely doing anything that might bridge the yawning gulf that separates them from the audience. This is occasionally punctuated with moments of histrionic melodrama, in which voices grow so tremulous that it becomes almost impossible to hear what is being said. Everything about the production suggests that the play has been approached as if on a pedestal. It is a fetishisation of Chekhov in which the wit of the script has been sacrificed for the sake of 'Greatness'.
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