Theater review: Seagull in the
Hamptons by Shotgun Players
Karen D'Souza
Tuesday, March 30th,
2010
The
San Jose Mercury News
Anton Chekhov catches
some rays in Emily Mann's breezy new adaptation of his
first play, A Seagull in the Hamptons.
Mann, best known for Having Our Say and Still Life, brings a tart 21st-century sensibility to this tragicomic valentine to the theater. Cheekily directed by Reid Davis in its West Coast premiere at Berkeley's Shotgun Players, this Seagull hits the beach with a bang. If some of the play's themes don't fit in the modern world, most of Mann's update is smart and fresh and, best of all, funny.
Here the formidable diva Arkadina becomes Maria (Trish Mulholland), a Broadway star who wilts outside the media glare of Manhattan. A stage veteran upstaged by the film and TV stars of the world (she blanches whenever someone mentions Meryl Streep), Maria thinks of her son Alex (Liam Callister), a would-be playwright, as a fetching accessory to the designer ensemble that is her life. As soon as he doesn't go with her look, he's out.
Masha, the morbid servant girl, is transformed into Millie (a wry turn by Anna Ishida), a goth chick with a nose ring and black nail polish who chain-smokes instead of inhaling snuff. She takes breaks from "mourning her life" to moon over Alex, who doesn't know she's alive. He's too busy clamoring for his mother's fickle affections, writing an experimental theatrical ode to a dying planet and chasing after the girl who lives down the beach, Nina (Kelsey Venter). Alas, Nina is young and gullible and dazzled by fame. She only has eyes for the well-known author Philip (Alex Moggridge), who is chained at the hip to Maria.
The central dynamics of the play remain the same. Everyone longs for someone or something they can't have and some are destroyed by their obsession. But Mann works in some astute bits of commentary about modern society, from the follies of timing the market to the groupthink of the literary class.
For instance, when Alex rails against his mother's brand of middlebrow theater, Mann gets in some delightful digs at the tawdry commercialism of Broadway with its relentlessly cheerful musicals and fawned-over British imports.
The beach emerges as a character unto itself as Maria's entourage wiggles their toes in the vast expanse of sand that is Robert Broadfoot's enchanting (and versatile) set. In the last scenes, the flowing dunes are boarded up and transformed into Maria's beach house.
Unfortunately, some aspects of Seagull don't track in this new universe. Part of it is simply the setting. The sand and sun and glamour of the Hamptons doesn't really echo the dank desolation of a crumbling country estate in the hinterlands of Russia.
Also, in the original, Nina is considered ruined by her ill-fated love affair. That sense of moral stigma doesn't make sense in the world today. It also doesn't quite click that Alex would feel so trapped and isolated living in the Hamptons, just a jitney ride away from New York City.
Venter makes up for some of the disjointedness with a radiant performance. She nails Nina's journey from bright-eyed to bitter without forcing either state. Her abject despair grounds the last act, which otherwise feels a little insubstantial here. Callister, while quite moving as the little boy lost, hasn't found a way to anchor the character's dawning sense of maturity and desperation. His suicidal rage seems to come of out nowhere.
These shortcomings keep this Seagull from soaring as high as it might, but it's still quite an engaging ride.
