A Seagull in the Hamptons

In her tenure as artistic director of McCarter Theatre, Emily Mann has now directed all four of Anton Chekhov's great plays (he wrote a fifth, Ivanov, but it's treated like a red-headed stepchild and rarely produced). I've seen two of them, as The Three Sisters was done before I moved here, but I thought her productions of The Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya were first rate. Now she has tackled The Seagull, but instead of setting it in turn-of-the-century Russia she has not only translated it but completely rewritten it, setting it in present-day Long Island. The results are mixed.

There's certainly nothing wrong with the inclination. The Cherry Orchard has been done with black actors in the roles of serfs. But what Mann has done here takes some hubris. Let's face it--for all of Mann's gifts, she is no Chekhov, and something has been definitely lost in translation. I reread the play today after seeing the production last night and some suspicions were confirmed: the magic and poetry of Chekhov's language got left by the side of the road.

For those unfamiliar, The Seagull takes place on an estate belonging to the family of a great stage actress. She is at odds with her mercurial son, who harbors ambitions to be a writer but rails against the conventionality of his mother's work. The actress is keeping time with a famed writer younger than she, while the son is besotted with a neighbor girl, Nina (Mann has Americanized all the names of the characters except Nina's). When the writer seduces Nina and ruins her life, just because he can, the son becomes suicidal. Oh, and this is a comedy.

Mann changes the locale from a Russian lakefront to the Hamptons, playground of the rich. The lead character is an actress on Broadway, completely self-absorbed. Her son is a little younger in this adaptation (19, where Chekhov makes him 25). Mann has scrubbed all references to Hamlet that Chekhov made, to draw parallels between Hamlet and Gertrude to Alex and Maria (son and mother in The Seagull). She also seems to have lessened the metaphor of the title bird. Alex shoots and kills a gull and presents it to Nina, and when Philip (the writer) sees this it seems to spark in his mind the idea of destroying Nina just as Alex has destroyed the bird. In the fourth act, Chekhov has Nina repeat three times, "I am a seagull." I didn't hear that line in Mann's adaptation, but to be fair, I couldn't hear much of what actress Morena Baccarin was saying in that act.

I've only seen one production of the original Seagull, and that one was hard to top--it was done in Central Park and starred five Oscar winners (Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kevin Kline, Christopher Walken and Marcia Gay Harden) as well as Natalie Portman as Nina. Directed by Mike Nichols, that production had snap, crackle, and pop, and was played as a comedy, all mention of suicide notwithstanding. The McCarter production, on the other hand, was much more lugubrious. There were frequent dead spots and the actors seemed to have no rhythm at all, as if they had each rehearsed their parts separately and just met for the first time that night.

A few of the actors acquit themselves quite well. I was impressed with Laura Heisler as Milly (Masha in Chekhov) who famously opens the play with the line, "I wear black because I am in mourning for my life." Heisler looks a bit like a beatnik in her black duds and energizes all of her scenes, despite playing someone severely depressed. I also enjoyed Brian Murray as Nick, Maria's brother, who provides most of the comic relief (although he's no match for the performance Walken gave in the Park). Nick is both funny and extremely sad, as he is an old man who is weighed down by regrets. And Larry Pine, who plays the doctor in both this production and the Nichols one, is terrific, but everything I've ever see him do is top-notch.

In the mixed results category are Morena Baccarin as Nina. She is certainly fetching, flouncing about in the first three acts barefoot, in skimpy sundresses, like a pixie. I'm sure most of the men in the audience were enraptured. She almost shines on stage, like a newly-minted penny, and it's easy to see why any men would lose his mind over her. But I wasn't impressed with her in the last act, after she's been used by Philip. Not only couldn't I hear her, but she just didn't sell the change she'd gone through, getting by mostly by indicating, a glum look on her puss. I'm also of a mixed opinion about Maria Tucci as Maria. She just wasn't convincing as a theatrical grand dame, perhaps because she doesn't have the regal bearing the part demands.

In the didn't-care-for category I include Stark Sands as Alex. To be fair, this is a tough part to play. He's really a spoiled brat, and probably crazy to boot. It's tough to sympathize with him. Sands inhabits the role well but doesn't transcend the weirdness of the role. And David Andrew McDonald is very weak as Philip (Trigorin in Chekhov). He is a first-class cad, a famous writer who spends all his time fretting that he's not considered as great as others, but he also should be charismatic. McDonald, though a nice-looking fellow, is unconvincing as a lothario (his high-pitch laugh doesn't help). Finally, I feel sorry for Matthew Maher as the poor schoolteacher who is in love with Milly. He's supposed to be a sad sack, but he delivers his lines with a halting cadence that makes it seem as though he was kicked in the head by a mule. Would a schoolteacher really sound like that?

For those who do end up seeing this, please take the time to read the Chekhov, preferably afterward, so you can remind yourself what was great about the play to begin with. To read it beforehand will only sharpen your disappointment.