Chekov’s The Seagull (1896) is drolly updated by Andrew Upton in this new Sydney Theatre Company production, directed by Imre Savage.
It digs deep into adolescence, with a keen focus on Constantine and Nina. This allows both Harry Greenwood and Mabel Li to give us the mercurial, hormonally challenged, whinging woosh of young people, crazily embracing the power of their unformed creativity. They gulp their words, they race around excitedly, they charge into tomorrow. Constantine is an irritating creature, as only a wilful adolescent can be.
The theatrical installation that unfolds on the wooden stage amongst the reeds of the summer estate allows for both humour and tenderness to be enacted, through its choreographed self-destruction and the attempted suicide by its young author.
The characters unfold around this theatrical space. Masha (Megan Wilding), all in black and moaning - is a two-note blues - angry at the love offered by her schoolteacher suitor (Simon), while suffering the unrequited love of her beau (Constantine). This tiny creature, febrile within these two states, stalks off into the reeds like any angry Buster Keaton. It was funny but didn’t fully settle into believability.
As the uncle and brother, Peter (Sean O’Shea), has a handy line in dithering angst and flashes of vulnerability and creativity. His playful way with his nephew and his understanding of how life defeats grand ambitions was bedded down in layers of wilful regret and self-regard.
As the young love interest, suffocated by her Baptists parents, Mabel Li’s Nina was gangly, shuddering, gawky as she responded to the romance of wanting to be a creative soul: a great actress. If in the end we fail to feel the depth of her delusions in the final act, when she arrives bedraggled to see Constantine one last time and leave – still doggedly bright on the ambition that is linked to limited talent - we can see the course of Chekov’s argument, if not its deep pathos.
In this production, Irina (Sigrid Thornton) the marvellous actor, celebrity, and survivor (almost like Desiree Armfeldt) is febrile, but destructive. Sigrid Thornton gives her energy, but in this adaption she seems to flicker in an out of view, somewhat erased She is the mechanism for Constantine’s destructive urges, she is the balmful listener of her brother’s demise and woes, but only seems to spring to full scabrous life when she is trying to retain the lustful worship of her novelist lover, Boris, the younger and more serious, middle brow storyteller who knows how they feed each other’s fame. Her determined performance does hint at the hard work that being part of the elite intelligentsia entails.
As Boris, Toby Schmitz has one of the best scenes in the play when he discourses on the angst and hollowness that writing engenders, anticipating with passion how his fame is irrelevant when he must confront the reckoning of his limited genius. He poetically enunciates the charge of shallowness and incompetence that all writers face. This long scene, with wide eyed Nina, was beautifully modulated by both actors. One is in search of an unadulterated fruit, one is intoxicated with glamour and fame, both enamoured of differential beauty and the sacrifices the altar of art may demand. Like that other lover, Dr Dorn, Boris seems more deeply in love with the lake and the reflective fishing on its shores.
The corresponding scene when Irina uses all her theatrical armour and her fear to hold onto Boris, on that altar and in dishevelled congress, was deftly choreographed with dark humour. His return to her and his fame is inevitable, but the resolution is sharded against the recurrent doubt that adolescent pleasure has passed him by, while his body still throbs with the overwhelming need to bite into the forbidden fruit that Nina offers him.
The relationship between mother (Irina) and son (Constantine) was believable. The scene when she patches his slight wound arising from the first suicide attempt was drolly funny and explosive – where the intersection of different creative possibilities is explored and defeated, once more.
In the last act, the trajectory of Constantine’s further suicide attempt and his unending desire for love and connection was nicely diagnosed and enacted in Harry’s Greenwood assumption. We felt the weight of his burgeoning literary success and the seething loss that lives beneath it, his inner life draining away before our eyes.
As the doctor, Dorn, Marcus Hamilton was a soothing commentator who observed but did not necessarily intervene to save anyone’s spiritual decline: “But what can I do, my child? What? What?” He only patches bodies. He was a handsome presence. One could see how he has settled into being a regional doctor and a successful womaniser. In essence, he seems more enamoured with the spellbinding lake and the remembrances of his foreign travel than the clan he oversights!
The housekeeper, Polly (Brigid Zengeni), kept her pining love for him just balanced between neediness and the small crumbs of tenderness she craves. She presented a brisk but tender understanding of her daughter, Masha’s, unrequited love. Her husband, Shamrayev (Michael Denkha), was gruff and redundant, partially incompetent and blustering - a veritable rascal. The updating of his expertise to an electrician of a touring band was tolerable, but he seems like he is drawn from another play.
In the second half, the interplay between Masha and her now husband, Simon, was shrill and stark. Her two-note blues was intact, her self-loathing a little more enhanced. Like Constantine’s will be, as they both discover that they cannot run away from the all-consuming, soul-destroying unrequited love that shapes the haunting shrift of their adolescent beings: formed but unformed.
As the teacher, Simon, Arka Das was a low-key, dogged presence, whose motivations were somewhat unclear.
The offstage death of Constantine, defeated by his obsessive need for love, brings forth the final dissimulation: that his death is to be kept from his mother. The doctor lies to protect Irina so the successful actor and writer might continue their success, while the young embrace death or limp off into the darkness of a third-rate theatrical life: bleak and strangely acceptable.
The set design (David Fleischer) was effectively sparse and at times beautiful. The updated costuming (Renee Mulder) reflected on some late 20th century milieu. Lighting (Amelia Lever-Davidson) was atmospheric as required. All was integrated into some summery ambience where truth and lies flit freely. If we were not overwhelmed by its trajectory, the impact and impost of creativity was effectively outlined.
Sydney Theatre Company, Packer Theatre, Sydney, November 28, 2023
Gar Jones
It digs deep into adolescence, with a keen focus on Constantine and Nina. This allows both Harry Greenwood and Mabel Li to give us the mercurial, hormonally challenged, whinging woosh of young people, crazily embracing the power of their unformed creativity. They gulp their words, they race around excitedly, they charge into tomorrow. Constantine is an irritating creature, as only a wilful adolescent can be.
The theatrical installation that unfolds on the wooden stage amongst the reeds of the summer estate allows for both humour and tenderness to be enacted, through its choreographed self-destruction and the attempted suicide by its young author.
The characters unfold around this theatrical space. Masha (Megan Wilding), all in black and moaning - is a two-note blues - angry at the love offered by her schoolteacher suitor (Simon), while suffering the unrequited love of her beau (Constantine). This tiny creature, febrile within these two states, stalks off into the reeds like any angry Buster Keaton. It was funny but didn’t fully settle into believability.
As the uncle and brother, Peter (Sean O’Shea), has a handy line in dithering angst and flashes of vulnerability and creativity. His playful way with his nephew and his understanding of how life defeats grand ambitions was bedded down in layers of wilful regret and self-regard.
As the young love interest, suffocated by her Baptists parents, Mabel Li’s Nina was gangly, shuddering, gawky as she responded to the romance of wanting to be a creative soul: a great actress. If in the end we fail to feel the depth of her delusions in the final act, when she arrives bedraggled to see Constantine one last time and leave – still doggedly bright on the ambition that is linked to limited talent - we can see the course of Chekov’s argument, if not its deep pathos.
In this production, Irina (Sigrid Thornton) the marvellous actor, celebrity, and survivor (almost like Desiree Armfeldt) is febrile, but destructive. Sigrid Thornton gives her energy, but in this adaption she seems to flicker in an out of view, somewhat erased She is the mechanism for Constantine’s destructive urges, she is the balmful listener of her brother’s demise and woes, but only seems to spring to full scabrous life when she is trying to retain the lustful worship of her novelist lover, Boris, the younger and more serious, middle brow storyteller who knows how they feed each other’s fame. Her determined performance does hint at the hard work that being part of the elite intelligentsia entails.
As Boris, Toby Schmitz has one of the best scenes in the play when he discourses on the angst and hollowness that writing engenders, anticipating with passion how his fame is irrelevant when he must confront the reckoning of his limited genius. He poetically enunciates the charge of shallowness and incompetence that all writers face. This long scene, with wide eyed Nina, was beautifully modulated by both actors. One is in search of an unadulterated fruit, one is intoxicated with glamour and fame, both enamoured of differential beauty and the sacrifices the altar of art may demand. Like that other lover, Dr Dorn, Boris seems more deeply in love with the lake and the reflective fishing on its shores.
The corresponding scene when Irina uses all her theatrical armour and her fear to hold onto Boris, on that altar and in dishevelled congress, was deftly choreographed with dark humour. His return to her and his fame is inevitable, but the resolution is sharded against the recurrent doubt that adolescent pleasure has passed him by, while his body still throbs with the overwhelming need to bite into the forbidden fruit that Nina offers him.
The relationship between mother (Irina) and son (Constantine) was believable. The scene when she patches his slight wound arising from the first suicide attempt was drolly funny and explosive – where the intersection of different creative possibilities is explored and defeated, once more.
In the last act, the trajectory of Constantine’s further suicide attempt and his unending desire for love and connection was nicely diagnosed and enacted in Harry’s Greenwood assumption. We felt the weight of his burgeoning literary success and the seething loss that lives beneath it, his inner life draining away before our eyes.
As the doctor, Dorn, Marcus Hamilton was a soothing commentator who observed but did not necessarily intervene to save anyone’s spiritual decline: “But what can I do, my child? What? What?” He only patches bodies. He was a handsome presence. One could see how he has settled into being a regional doctor and a successful womaniser. In essence, he seems more enamoured with the spellbinding lake and the remembrances of his foreign travel than the clan he oversights!
The housekeeper, Polly (Brigid Zengeni), kept her pining love for him just balanced between neediness and the small crumbs of tenderness she craves. She presented a brisk but tender understanding of her daughter, Masha’s, unrequited love. Her husband, Shamrayev (Michael Denkha), was gruff and redundant, partially incompetent and blustering - a veritable rascal. The updating of his expertise to an electrician of a touring band was tolerable, but he seems like he is drawn from another play.
In the second half, the interplay between Masha and her now husband, Simon, was shrill and stark. Her two-note blues was intact, her self-loathing a little more enhanced. Like Constantine’s will be, as they both discover that they cannot run away from the all-consuming, soul-destroying unrequited love that shapes the haunting shrift of their adolescent beings: formed but unformed.
As the teacher, Simon, Arka Das was a low-key, dogged presence, whose motivations were somewhat unclear.
The offstage death of Constantine, defeated by his obsessive need for love, brings forth the final dissimulation: that his death is to be kept from his mother. The doctor lies to protect Irina so the successful actor and writer might continue their success, while the young embrace death or limp off into the darkness of a third-rate theatrical life: bleak and strangely acceptable.
The set design (David Fleischer) was effectively sparse and at times beautiful. The updated costuming (Renee Mulder) reflected on some late 20th century milieu. Lighting (Amelia Lever-Davidson) was atmospheric as required. All was integrated into some summery ambience where truth and lies flit freely. If we were not overwhelmed by its trajectory, the impact and impost of creativity was effectively outlined.
Sydney Theatre Company, Packer Theatre, Sydney, November 28, 2023
Gar Jones
