The Seagull @ The Barbican Theatre, London
A modernist take on Chekhov’s with an Interstellar-style cornfield and in which you long for Cate Blanchett to do a musical next — for she sparkles and shines, tap dances and does the splits!
Like Enemy of the People, this version of Chekhov’s The Seagull gutsily wants the audience to interact, to react, to be present and respond — boldly questioning who and what the arts, the theatre, literature and music is for, and if art is even really worth it when the world is in such a time as this. What is art worth and what makes good art good, worthy the production screams into our brains? Are we consumers and why? What do we even think we’re doing when we participate, make or consume art? Rather than the meaning of life, what is the meaning, the end, the goal, the purpose of art and artistic creation? Though you may want to ‘boo;’ as characters nihilistically declare that the world is ending and art, theatre and literature are dead.
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Unlike the tender, emotionally crafted, trapped with each other in a box stage setting of the Harold Pinter Seagull production, here we get a wider sense of place here through the cast entering and exiting through a cornfield in stage, and the use of a catwalk stage into the audience. Promoting the idea of a play within a play, characters wander on, set up a guitar to play some Billy Bragg, whilst another asks if the play has started yet and setting the scene of waiting, boredom, longing. The servant characters in the Chekhov original are keen not to be left out of the action — being sent on their way to move chairs. At other points, characters use the catwalk projecting into the audience to walk out, speak with us and to us, to share their deepest thoughts and emotions. The fourth wall is being smashed in this punk version of Chekhov!
Konstantin (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is arranging an entertainment to impress his famous actress mother, Irina Arkadina (Cate Blanchett) and her younger lover Alexander Tregorin (originally named Boris in the play) (Tom Burke). Quite literally, the play/experimental cutting-edge drama what I wrote. Konstantin longs for aspiring actress Nina (Emma Corrin), who has a complicated and unhappy family across the lake, to love him and love his art. And for everyone to stop questioning, criticising and belittling him and his art. Ruffling the surface of Nina’s contained life are themes of agency, owning and earning her own money and property and losing access to her inheritance due to her father’s remarriage and her gender under the law. Even parental rejection and unkind families. Nina is fangirling Tregorin, having read his books — Tregorin meanwhile seeks inspiration. What could possibly go wrong?
In the background is the unhappy Masha (Tanya Reynolds), deep in despair and trying to find some meaning to life and living. Like all the characters she’s looking for love, hope, a clear pathway in life, a future. Equally frustrated, but in different ways, is Polina (Priyanga Burford), wife to Ilya (Paul Higgins) — both of whom work on the estate. Polina is having an affair with the local doctor Evgeny (Paul Bazely) — who’s meant to be sophisticated, educated, well-travelled, suave. Instead, in this production, Simon and Ilya’s characters have been brought to the fore — Simon is kind, caring and musically talented, playing us Billy Bragg songs. He can even drive a buggy, unhitch a trailer and reverse that buggy — on stage! Ilya is purposeful, working incredibly hard, having to manage the whims of self-obsessed people around the routine work which needs to be done, and though a teller of stories, appears a pleasant person. Simon worries about the cost of living, working in a factory, concerned about costs and what will become of him. How he could ever provide for or house a wife and family. In this set-up, it’s hard to work out why Polina prefers the gentle, quiet, colourless doctor to her husband who seems so integrated into community life. We don’t get a sense of who the doctor is. Nor do we understand why Polina despises Simon so and urges Masha not to marry him — yes Masha is marrying as a kind of distraction from herself, which is a good reason not to. But at the same time, Simon enquiries after the audience’s wants and mood and cares about us — and plays us a song or two. He’s constantly going to check in on and care for others. What’s not to like? In this new version, more needs to be done to show why the women are so unhappy and discontent, particularly with their menfolk and their life choices. At the moment they just appear unreasonable, unkind and just in need of a change of location. Though deeply melancholic and worryingly self-destructive, drinking a lot constantly, Masha can appear just comedic for much of the play. Hinted at, though never explored, she seems to love Konstantin and even flirts with Tregorin — who listens to her. (Though she, like Nina, may just be a plot device).
In modernising the play, we lose the sense of traditions and ways of life passing — of the new choices offered by industrialisation and urbanisation, of massive social change. Perhaps if Simon was working in e-commerce or a front-line service industry instead, or as a zero contract delivery driver, then we’d have greater resonance to his circumstances.
Quibbles aside, this is such a play and I was privileged to see it. Cate Blanchett’s performance was superb; full of posturing and bombast — tap dancing, sparkles and the splits! On the other hand, she could go into snarling criticism and stagey despair. Konstantin is endlessly criticised by his mother — his VR play doesn’t wow her as he hopes. At the same time, this is very much an ensemble piece — we get a strong sense of brother and sister growing older, battling ageing and health issues, and recalling what a party was like in their youth (complete with Golden Brown soundtrack).
The structure of the play itself continues to play with the idea of outer and inner life, using microphones for when characters are ‘acting’ or ‘putting on a show’. In a terrifically powerful moment, Irina rips off her microphone pack, sinks down into painful despair, cries and gently, naturally pleads for her lover not to leave her or betray her. We really feel the pain of this moment and boldly the production is not afraid to use silence or uncomfortable pauses to highlight the emotions on stage.
Nina, who of all of them, has the most reason to go into despair and break down, maintains a light gentle presence. In a clever scene, soundtracked, we get a sense of Tregorin and Nina beginning to click as they debate literature and writing. In a comic scene, Tregorin falls backwards into the corn, re-emerging with an ear of corn stuck in his hair — removed by Nina. Tom Burke’s Tregorin as writer (complete with nasty shorts), may not be believable — (we never get a sense of him as a writer, of struggling to write or being bored with what he’s creating or bored of the fame and lauding of his writing), beyond scribbling at times into notebooks. With its snarling challenge of who deserves to be an artist and funded, the theme of ‘is it any good?’ could really have been brought out in Tregorin. However, his burgeoning relationship with Nina is utterly believable and we feel the tug-o’-war going on in his heart and spirit. As is the potential of Nina as actress, a trembling Aerial in monologue flight. And beware — for Konstantin is in seagull shooting mode.
The first half is utterly compelling. The second half is quieter and does struggle to make itself heard — although there are stand-outs in Irina’s brother Peter’s collapse and ailing; the playing of Bingo; Masha’s hurtful rejection and dismissal of her now husband Simon (and their child); Konstantin trying and failing to ‘fly’ socially, independently or to achieve critical success and Nina’s haunted return, wanting to avoid everyone and everything. Again, we get the sense that Nina (of all of them) deserves to complain and rebel, as her step-mother has locked her out and guarded the estate against her return. (To her own birth mother’s house, no less). Yet she doesn’t — fluttering in gentle, painful meekness. We also see Konstantin thriving (as a published writer) and being diminished again, when his mother (in a spectacular stagey collapse) refuses to allow him a life, any funds of his own, to leave. And she’s leaves him, yet again.
Overcome by what has happened to Nina — and Tregorin’s trailing unwillingly after his mother, still — there’s a terrible, shocking ending to the play.
In contrast to the Harold Pinter production focused on the meaning of life and connection, here it’s hard to feel compassion for Konstantin as he gets lost under the set, bellowing into mics and amongst the other characters. He seems to be someone who needs to be placated rather than loved — we don’t get a sense of him as a person, of his inner life. Though we see the outworking of it — in his book and in his scarred, bandaged head.
Nor is it possible to see why the doctor is such a catch — unless he’s literally a passport out of there. He should give more hints of the world outside to be truly attractive. Nor why any of them (apart from Nina and maybe Konstantin and definitely Peter) would want to leave. Using a catwalk into the audience, we get the sense of the cast looking out into the lake. Bird calls are used to give a sense of the countryside; I really enjoyed the quivering stalks of corn heralding the approach of a cast member, or how they had to fight their way back out of the corn. Life is not easy or convenient here. Love Peter’s rants against the countryside, but for the others — what’s their motivation? Irina is so magnetic, we feel sorry for her — knowing that she’s working hard to fight a sexist establishment and to never do a ‘banal play!’ We definitely got a strong sense of Irina as brave actress here, as well as failing mother. But she was such a shining light, that we perhaps lost sense of the rest of the cast — particularly in the sadder moments. And made us all want to don Irina t-shirts rather than worrying about seagulls losing their flight and failing to soar, or an unwell son wandering around the estate with a loaded gun.
Instead I was left feeling compassion for Simon, despised husband and for Ilya, whose stories were not appreciated or enjoyed by his wife. He was even in a choir — which she found annoying!!! And for the displayed seagull…
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