The Guardian
Checkov smoulders
***
Michael Billington
Thursday February 3, 2000
In 1896 Chekhov's play had a disastrous
first night in St Petersburg. In
Stratford-upon-Avon it nearly had an
incendiary one. In the first act the curtains
of Konstantin's mock-theatre brushed
against candle-flame and caught fire.
Prompt action by the production manager,
Jasper Gilbert, who leapt up on stage and
put out the fire prevented the flames
spreading and may well have helped save
this beautiful wooden theatre. After 10
minutes or so, the play resumed but it
was an unnerving experience for actors
and audience alike.
But how did you enjoy the play, Mrs
Lincoln? In the circumstances, it is
difficult to say but I feel Adrian Noble's
production is a mixed affair. It is full of
acute detail, heightens the play's
Hamletesque references and has a very
Russian sense of atmosphere. Gulls cry,
the wind sighs in the trees, waves lap
against the lake shore. There is also a
heartstopping moment when the
characters sit and listen to the sound of
distant music and laughter. It not only
evokes past happiness but achingly
counterpoints the lovelorn sadness that
taints Chekhov's people.
If there is a reservation in my voice, it has
to do with the need for the RSC to revive
The Seagull so soon after Terry Hands's
superlative production in The Swan.
Without wishing to be ageist, Noble's cast
is also, in several crucial cases, much
older than Chekhov states -something that
may not matter in Shakespeare but that is
important in realistic drama. The novelist,
Trigorin, is meant to be under 40. Nigel
Terry, however, presents us with a
grizzled figure who makes up for in energy
what he lacks in youth. Dorn, the debonair
doctor, is only 55. As played by Richard
Johnson he becomes an older figure full of
grave melancholy.
In the case of Penelope Wilton's superb
Arkadina, however, age is simply
irrelevant. Wilton presents us with an
instantly recognisable figure - the
dedicated, self-centred actress
determined to keep professional or sexual
rivals at bay. When she hisses at her son
that his symbolist play is "decadent" it is
because she senses a threat to her own
conventional style of theatre. And when
she tells Nina "I'm sure you must have
talent" it is with the casual disdain of
someone who spies a potential erotic
challenge.
Wilton does not judge Arkadina. She
shows how talent is always accompanied
by insecurity. Justine Waddell's Nina also
presents a genuine threat. She has
beauty, spirit and the single-minded
intensity of the genuinely ambitious. She
also makes sense of that treacherous last
act where Nina returns emotionally
devastated but determined to endure.
There is much in Noble's production, as
well as Peter Gill's new version, to admire.
But it needs time to mature before it sets
out on a UK tour - and fireproof curtains.