There is a reason why people like myself head off to the theatre several times a week, year in year out. It’s because we know, every now and again, that we will stumble into a dark room and find ourselves presented with a miracle in the form. A work of stage art that makes you laugh and cry and think and be glad to be alive – if for no better reason than you got to see this show. In this case, it is Benedict Andrews’ funny and tender, clever and humble production of The Seagull – the first of Chekhov’s most famous and celebrated plays. It was a play that went down badly at its premiere in 1896, and even to this day the most promising productions usually fail to get near to its shy and tender heart. Oh yeah, it’s funny too. Especially in this version.
I can’t think of a play I love more, and here it is on stage in all its vulnerable, elusive beauty: true to the spirit of the text (I think there is such a thing), and forged from Andrews’ increasingly fascinating personal stage language. Andrews’ creative impulses endeavour, like no other Australian director, to balance intellect and feeling. And, as he get better at telling stories on stage, he finds more and more room for his actors (all very good here) to contribute fundamentally to the making of the work. Meanwhile, we are already used to him working intensely with his designers to create stage worlds that capture in physical form the ideas he has chosen to explore.
Fortunately for Chekhov (and theatre history) The Seagull got a second chance when, in 1898, Stanislavski chose to direct it at his Moscow Art Theatre. There’s an irony in the story of The Seagull’s shaky beginnings because that’s how the play itself opens. With a play within a play - which goes down rather badly for its young author. One of the reasons I like this play is its topic - it is as much about the subject of art (an interest of mine – lol) as it is about life: more specifically, about the making of art and its reception.
Chekhov takes four sensitive artistic types and throws them into conflict at several levels. A young writer, Constantine Treplev (Dylan Young) and a young actress, Nina Zarechnya (Maeve Dermody), versus the mature and successful actress Irena Arkadina (Judy Davis), Constantine’s mother; and her current companion, the writer Aleksei Trigorin (David Wenham). Arkadina and Trigorin have arrived at the family estate from the city for a summer holiday. Not unexpectedly, their short stay turns life among the regular residents upside down. This tension between the colourful goings-on of the big smoke (somewhere far away) and the dullness of the family retreat is a feature of much of Chekhov’s writing (plays and stories). In The Seagull it is played out with particular intensity, what with the many references to Arkadina’s city life as a famous actress and Trigorin’s renown as a published writer. Also involved in the story are Sorin (John Gaden), Arkadina’s brother, in charge of the estate but in failing health; Dorn (Bille Brown), the family doctor; and Masha (Emily Barclay) the daughter of the manager Shamrayev (Terry Serio) and his wife Polina (Anita Hegh).Then there’s Semyon (Gareth Davies), the poverty-stricken school-teacher, in love with Masha (reluctantly she ultimately succumbs).
I once saw a version (early 1980s?) at the Royal Court in London set in rural Ireland, with London’s West End standing in for the actress’s St Petersburg. This was at a time when such relocations (and associated textual reworking) was new, and it worked brilliantly. I thought at the time, we could do this for The Seagull in Australia, living as we too have done for so long under the shadow of similar provincial insecurities.
The setting here is a dinky 60s-70s fibro holiday house of the sort you find on the dripping edge of Lake Macquarie or Jervis Bay. The big-smoke could be Sydney. How far we have come? That we could construct such a conceit! It’s a perfunctory L-shaped kit home with lots of aluminium-framed doors and windows, clunky bunk beds and cheap floral seating – designer Ralph Myers. Costumes are by Dale Ferguson and lighting by Damien Cooper. For those of us who grew up with these kinds of holidays,it’s a perfect rendering of our childhood memories. Many of these shacks still stand – and so with a translation that has been impeccably nuanced into this setting, the time is now. Scenes played within the house remind us at times of Andrew’s wonderful production of The Season at Sarsaparilla for the STC Actors Company.
In Chekhov’s original rendering, doom-addled Masha dresses is black, drinks too much and snorts snuff. Here in the Aussie setting, Masha’s look is ‘Emo black’, starts the show with a wobbly entrance in those ridiculous clunky multi-strapped ‘prison shoes’ women have been sucked into wearing for the last year or so. She is literally out-of-kilter with daily life. Through the show she knocks back a lot of vodka, but in this silent opening sequence she presents modern Australia to us by way of putting together and getting high on ‘pot’ by way of a bucket bong. Voila – here is our world. Suburban tragic…
The action kicks in when other characters arrive to prepare for a presentation of Constantin’s ‘futuristic’ play with a solo performance from young Nina. In this version the stage is a smallish perspex cube within which the ‘wild’ dramatisation is contained. Not only is this a youthfully ‘avant-garde’ setting, this show behind glass reminds us of Andrews’ productions of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Measure for Measure. While these were mature (and successful) works, it’s nice to see Andrews’ make fun of his own creative impulses. Soon enough all the main characters have assembled.
Unfortunately, after not too long, Arkadina begins to mock, fobbing the playlet off as folly in front of the other guests. Humiliated, Constantine brings the production to a hasty close and flees in humiliation. Utterly absorbed in herself and her own needs,Arkadina does not realise how hurtful she is being. Sorin tries to alert her to the dangers of her actions, but she rejects his admonishment. To add counterpoint, playing the ‘observer’ throughout the play, Dorn on the other hand sees talent in the play. But it is not Dorn from whom Constantine desperately needs approval, rather his mother.
Typically of Chekhov, in a series of tiny incremental moves, the happy holiday inexorably unravels. All but a coupleof the most perfunctory servant characters get to reveal their dreams, cut short more often than not by harsh reality. Yet Chekhov insists this is a comedy, and in the production definitely so. All the characters are flawed, none more entertaining so than Arkadina – the actress mother. A diva in her own lunch-time, and played here with mesmerising brilliance by our own most singular diva, this country’s greatest actress, Judy Davis.
If I could digress for a moment. Nothing will send a shiver of excitement through theatre lovers in this city than news that Judy Davis is to appear on stage. These occasions are rare, and since her graduation from NIDA in the late 1970s, she has never disappointed. Off stage some say she is difficult: all I can say to that is for an actor to be able to expose themselves emotionally to the extent on stage that Davis is able, I am not surprised they sometimes find day-to-day life hard going. Why I refer to this is because what we have here, effectively, in The Seagull, is a diva playing a diva. And what is so enthralling and impressive is the way Davis creates her crazy emotionally f*cked-up, overly theatrical Arkadina, from a place inside herself that is free of all vanity. I am struggling to find the words for this, but for the record, it’s important: to try and explain how Davis’s greatness comes from a very humble place in herself. Most famous Arkadina’s ‘steal the show’. Davis only does this to the extent required by the character, she plays the ‘diva’ only in inverted commas, and often hilarious in her interpretation. But what makes her performance so remarkable is the extent to which Davis disciplines herself to remain at all times committed to the work of the ‘ensemble’. Now at the prime of her life, we are seeing in Davis’s Arkadina a once-in-a-lifetime performance. Consummate, impeccable: yet typically Australian in being ruthlessly ‘anti-star’.
This is only possible because Davis shares the stage with actors who can match her: Bille Brown, John Gaden, David Wenham, Terry Serio, Anita Hegh – these are the seniors. How good can casting get! I often cite this as a golden age of acting in Australia – well here it is for anyone who has got themselves a ticket to see. Every one of these actors finds a wonderful, personal truth in the characters they play. And, to add to the excitement, we obviously have a future when the younger parts are able to filled by emerging talents as good as Emily Barclay, Gareth Davies, Maeve Dermody and Dylan Young. From the overall pool of talent available, Andrews’ has cast this play to perfection. That’s half the job done. Then, not only does he allow each of these actors the chance to bring themselves to these roles – without damaging that, Andrews’ then spins into life his interpretation. His ‘reading’ of The Seagull is for us in this city today. It’s the balance between the freedom Andrews allows his actors here and the shape he gives to the world he creates (for them to live within) that makes this production so impressive. So beautiful to watch. I don’t want to take anything away from what Andrews has done before, and among the highlights for me have been hisJulius Ceasar and his Sarsaparilla. But this production is surely a new high point. I don’t know what Andrews has been up to since he relocated to Berlin, but we don’t really need to know. This is the latest in his series of Australian works and it announces his certain arrival at full maturity. I really don’t think you can get better theatre-making than this.
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