The Seagull

The big draw of this production of Chekhov’s The Seagull at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre (now coming to us via National Theatre Live) was the casting of Emilia Clarke as Nina. Best known as ‘Daenerys Targaryen’ In Game of Thrones, she of the dragons does not disappoint. She employs that radiant, disarming smile to give us a sweet, naively ambitious, starstruck centre to the play.

But if your expectations of Chekhov are that any production will have a more or less naturalistic set - some dacha in a remote backwater - the actors will be in 1890s clothing, musing in armchairs, there’ll be a samovar bubbling away, and there will be a variety of regrets, frustrations, and thwarted hopes among the characters, then this production will surprise, if not shock. 

When the lights come up, we find the whole cast of ten seated in a row on utilitarian green plastic chairs.  They are all barefoot.  Their costumes are non-descript without distinction of race or class.  Most radical of all is that they are lined up all in a row in Soutra Gilmour’s set, confined in a large box - floor, walls, and ceiling all completely made of blank pine board.  Harshly lit from above.  No doors, no windows, no pictures on the walls.  If someone must leave the stage, they must literally climb off at the front and into the audience.  True, the rear wall is removed in the second half, but that only leaves a black emptiness.

Producer-director Jamie Lloyd strips away all the period props and wardrobe and leaves just the regrets, frustrations, and thwarted hopes - plain, clear, and unadorned.  (In this, Lloyd goes even further than director Louis Malle did in his 1994 movie Vanya on 42^nd Street - a contemporary dress version in a crumbling old theatre.)

Here everything must be conveyed in Anya Reiss’ updated (but not at all jarring or trivialised) colloquial dialogue and by the faces of a varied but superb cast.  Everyone wears a clearly visible head mike that allows for extremely naturalistic speech - intense exchanges, whispers, murmurs, and smothered tears.  Possibly we are luckier than the London live audience in getting a filmed version directed for the screen by Tim Van Someren.  The cameras give us the detail and nuance of the concentrated performances from actors who scarcely move from their chairs - and who remain on stage, still and expressionless, if they are not in a scene. 

Even so, there are no close ups: medium shot two shots are as tight as we get.  Because the characters are in that box, the camera can’t shoot from the side either.  So, the ‘coverage’ is all static and quite simple. 

One consequence of this approach - the box, the chairs, the drab wardrobe, the lack of movement - is that a fair few audience members left during the first half, and a fair few more did not return for the second.  For those who stayed, what we saw and felt was still strangely compelling.  You almost forget the box and everything else as you follow the story and the characters’ tangled thoughts and emotions.  Chekhov’s profound understanding of human motives - all in subtext so that we understand more than they do - holds us in place.  In The Seagull everyone is in love with the wrong person - and that can be sad or tragic or just that bit desperate, or funny. 

Masha (Sophie Wu), married to schoolteacher Medvedenko (Mika Onyx Johnson) is in melodramatic, yearning love with Konstantin (Daniel Monks).  But too bad that bitter thwarted Konstantin is in love with innocent Nina (Emilia Clarke), who is in turn besotted with ‘successful’ writer Boris Trigorin (Tom Rhys Harries).  He is the toy boy lover of fading, manipulative matriarch Irina Arkadina (the marvellous Indira Varma).  On the side, Polina (Sara Powell) wife of the estate’s snarky steward Shamrayev (a grumpy, funny Jason Barnett), is having a quiet affair with kindly humanist Dr Dorn (Gerald Kyd).  And Arkadina’s ex-judge brother Sorin (Robert Glenister) looks on - or he would if he were not preoccupied with his failing health, dying and regret…  You can see why Chekhov insisted his play was a comedy. 

Clearly, here is a production which divides audiences.  Until you go with it, that is, slip into the way of things, it can be alienating and hard work.  It’s also arguable that Lloyd’s chosen mode in this case is quite unsuitable for Chekhov, that too much is lost under the constraints placed on the actors.  All the same, Chekhov’s quiet genius survives, and The Seagull is still piercingly insightful, clear-eyed, funny and with all the sadness that comes from people pursuing the wrong dreams.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Marc Brenner