The Times

February 3 2000 ...............................THEATRE

Adrian Noble's new staging of The Seagull in Stratford

overcame added first-night drama to enthral Benedict

Nightingale

 

Noble turns up the RSC heat

 

I could count on maybe 200 hands the times I have

longed to jump onstage and apply matches or even blazing

faggots to the bottoms of performers who were idling

through their roles. How ironic, then, that the one

occasion I have seen a set catch fire was when, so far

from needing the extra heat, the cast could have done with

cold compresses to temper the fever already in the air.

 

The first act of the opening night of Adrian Noble's fine

revival of Chekhov's The Seagull was near its end when it

happened. Candles on the garden stage where the aspiring

writer Konstantin presents his little play set alight the

makeshift curtains, bringing RSC staff on to the Swan

stage with extinguishers and sending the actors to their

dressing rooms.

 

Smoke could still be smelt when, five minutes later, the

production resumed with the line, wryly uttered by

Richard Pasco's ageing landowner: "Let us go in, ladies

and gentlemen, it's getting cold." But the real point was

that within moments that superb veteran, Richard Johnson,

and a talented young actor, John Light, transformed a

giggly audience into one that remained utterly rapt for the

next two-odd hours.

 

British directors long ago stopped thinking that Chekhov's

plays need dreamy, ultra-atmospheric productions.

Indeed, one of the ways Noble shows his confidence is by

emphatically reintroducing the scene-setting sounds -

offstage song, birds, high wind - his colleagues would

have rejected as old-fashioned. And he can afford to do

so, because his actors display a most un-British volatility

of feeling. Again and again tempers flare or threaten to do

so. Again and again you sense that everyone onstage is

desperately in love with someone who doesn't love him or

her.

 

Penelope Wilton is particularly strong as the actress

Arkadina, Konstantin's neglectful mother and the mistress

of his rival in love, Trigorin. It is usual to bring out the

character's insecurity and terror of ageing. But Wilton

does so by inference, showing us a woman who has

clearly battled up the theatrical ladder, acquiring in the

process a frightening force of personality as well as her

notorious meanness with money. She is blunt, tough

enough to slap her son while raging at him as a "nothing",

and wholly in command of Nigel Terry's Trigorin. The

audience usually laughs when Arkadina lards her errant

lover with exorbitant praise, then says she isn't a flatterer;

but not this time. Wilton is too effective, too formidable.

 

That is an impressive feat, because Terry, though a bit old

for the role, is neither spineless nor especially vulnerable

nor a nonchalant roué, but energetic, restless and totally

credible when he talks of his obsession with writing. Here,

everywhere, one is unusually aware of the characters'

intensity. Pasco's Sorin intensely regrets his disappointing

life. Light's rumpled, edgy Konstantin loves intensely, as

do Justine Waddell's pale, anxious Nina, and (a most

interesting performance) Niamh Linehan's scattily

exhibitionist, brutally frustrated Masha.

 

If Waddell had given us less earnestly anguished ambition,

and more of Nina's freshness and sweetness, the

dénouement with Konstantin might be more moving. But

never mind. Noble is able to fill any silences in Peter Gill's

brisk new translation with emotional eloquence, and his

cast are generous with telling detail. For instance, did it

occur to you that when Arkadina tells Trigorin his books

are kept "in the study - in a cupboard in the corner", she is

expressing her anger at him by putting him down? It is a

sign of the evening's distinction that Wilton's tiny pause

suggests just that.