Resumo de The Seagull - Anton Chekhov

The Seagull
Anton Chekhov
If Chekhov were alive today to witness the hordes camped out overnight in Central Park for free tickets to the New York Shakespeare Festival?s star-studded production of The Seagull, he would be flabbergasted. After all, the play bombed when it was first produced in St. Petersburg, shortly after its first publication in March, 1896. Sadly, despite a cast and crew of experienced and talented artists, this production is not worth the wait. The play explores unrequited love through characters who ultimately never achieve their heart?s desire. The action opens on Sorin?s country estate in August. Near the lake at the edge of his property, his talented, but troubled, nephew Konstantin stages a play he has written. Konstantin's mother, Arkadina, a famous aging actress, has returned to the country for a visit and brought in tow her younger lover, Trigorin, a famous writer. In typical Oedipal fashion, Konstantin reveals his jealousy of Trigorin, not only for his success as a writer, but also for Arkadina?s infatuation with him and his success. Trigorin, meanwhile, falls for Konstantin?s love, Nina, a budding young actress and daughter of a wealthy landowner across the lake. She spurns Konstantin, follows Trigorin to Moscow and ruins her respectability by becoming his lover and bearing his child. Yet through her experiences, she discovers that endurance and faith are the most important elements of life. These help her continue acting. The emotionally fragile Konstantin, on the other hand, cannot bear his mother?s and finally Nina?s abandonment. The juxtaposition of the young couple, Nina and Konstantin, with the older couple, Arkadina and Trigorin, serves as the play?s emotional core. As Arkadina, Meryl Streep returns to the stage after a twenty-year absence and provides a rich, playful performance that recalls Margo Channing in All About Eve. Prancing, dancing, even cart-wheeling on stage, she creates the production?s most compelling and complicated character, magnanimous one moment, yet, in the blink of an eye, demanding and petulant as a school child. She seduces both Trigorin and the audience with her charm, sensuality and confidence. Kevin Kline, as Trigorin, gives the most natural performance. While he shies away from revealing Trigorin?s calculating nature, especially in his encounters with Nina, he is the most comfortable with his lines. They roll right off his tongue as if they were his, not Chekhov?s. Natalie Portman titters about the stage doll-like and full of naïve wonder. However, her portrait of Nina is too hollow to gain full sympathy. Only Larry Pine?s performance as Dorn, the calm, perceptive doctor and voice of reason, rises above the others as a substantial anchor in the play. Christopher Walken provides comic relief as Sorin, the retired state councilor. Yet he hams it up too much for a sickly character supposedly near his deathbed. Walken?s performance is better suited for Saturday Night Live than Chekhov. Publicity for the play has touted that this production is a new version by Tom Stoppard. Upon inspecting Chekhov?s text, his input appears to consist mostly of pushing the delete key in long passages and updating the jokes for a modern audience. The polish so appreciated in Shakespeare in Love is not apparent here. Mike Nichols? direction is flat and lacking drama. Each actor appears to be working alone, rather than coming together into a cohesive ensemble. Tensions never build and an emotional payoff never arrives.
Biography
ANTON CHEKHOV was born in the old Black Sea port of Taganrog on January 17 [Old Style], 1860. His grandfather had been a serf; his father married a merchant's daughter and settled in Taganrog, where, during Anton's boyhood, he carried on a small and unsuccessful trade in provisions. The young Chekhov was soon impressed into the services of the large, poverty-stricken family, and he spoke regretfully in after years of his hard-worked childhood.t he was obedient and good-natured, and worked cheerfully in his father's shop, closely observing the idlers that assembled there, and gathering the drollest stories, which he would afterward whisper in class to his laughing schoolfellows. Many were the punishments which he incurred by this habit, which was incorrigible.

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