A Seagull in the Hamptons Properly Stuffed the Old Chekhov’s Way
Emma Krasov
Monday, April 19, 2010
Art and Entertain Me

However contemporary and americanized, it’s refreshing to find A Seagull in the Hamptons at Shotgun Players true to the original in terms of the author’s intentions and motivations. Let’s take a brief detour to explore Russia’s special attitude toward writers and the written word, so different from what we are blissfully used to here, shall we? A fiction writer in Russia, or a belletrist, like Chekhov himself or like his character Trigorin in Seagull is not just a story teller. In the country chronically devoid of free speech and free press, a writer is a public figure close to a prophet. A writer in Russia sets moral standards for the society and shows the way for an individual to conduct one’s life. However, no matter how high the writer is esteemed, he still writes about what he knows best.

Chekhovian characters rarely differ from the author, his colleagues, relatives, and the surrounding reality up to his occupations and recognizable life events. A medical doctor and a writer, Chekhov often portrays cynical and irresponsible doctors, womanizing (and cynical) novelists, and shallow self-absorbed (and cynical) actors. In his own life, one of the best known Russian authors formed a co-dependent relationship with an actress who played leads in all his plays. The actress initiated an open marriage with the playwright; perennially fell in love with other men, and confessed to her husband her love sickness and her morning sickness (caused by another), too.

In Seagull, an aspiring playwright Treplev is suffering from not one but two actresses. His mother, Arkadina-Trepleva is too busy being a diva in her prime and in love with Trigorin, while the love of his life, a young aspiring actress Nina Zarechnaya, is hopelessly in love with that same Trigorin who destroys her in-between his other affairs. Two writer characters in Seagull reflect the author’s real life situation and the one he perhaps secretly wishes for. Trigorin’s effortless womanizing, and his easy success with publishers and with comely maidens is on the one hand despicable, but on the other enviable for a hard-working writer and a faithful husband whose efforts are never enough. In Seagull, there are many other parallels with Chekhov’s circumstances and the people who surrounded him in real life, and A Seagull in the Hamptons successfully follows all of them. A comedy in four acts, “freely adapted” by Emily Mann and directed by Reid Davis, is performed in a beautiful set (Robert Broadfoot) by a well-fitted troupe, with a central part rightfully belonging to Maria [Arkadina-Trepleva of the original] played by Trish Mulholland. Her every word, every gesture, every grimace; her sparkling blue eyes, her body language, even her unruly curls electrify the stage and exude the vibrancy of great acting, shared by the rest of the cast (Andy Alabran, Liam Callister, Beth Deichtman, Anna Ishida, Richard Louis James, Mark Manske, John Mercer, Alex Moggridge, Kelsey Venter).