The Seagull

Watching The Seagull in 2008, it's difficult to realize how revolutionary Chekhov's vision originally was in 1905. In a sense, he's a victim of his own success: those ticks we now know as "Chekhovian" have become part of the fabric of contemporary theater.

This was the first of the master's four major theater works, and it's the one where the bones are most apparent. This is a theme that has been popular since the Roman Terence composed his comedies: A group of middle-class swells from the Big City converge in a country home, where musical beds, jealousy and even madness ensue. This was probably one of the inspirations for Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer's Night (which A Little Night Music was based on); even more, Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Renoir's Rules of the Game, Altman's Gosford Park ... well, you get the idea.

Although she doesn't have the largest part--more of that below--the actress Irina Arkadina is the linchpin of the action. A force of nature--she'd probably characterize herself that way, anyway--Irina is the prototype for the outsized diva. The fact that she's played by Dianne Wiest, who stole Allen's Bullets Over Broadway (and won an Oscar) for a very similar role has made this the second highly anticipated Seagull of the season, after the BAM production with Sir. Ian MacKellan.

No Sir Ian here, but there's another gay theater icon (or near-icon) working the boards. Alan Cumming plays Trigorin, a shallow but successful novelist and Irina's lover. Trigorin's main rival for Irina's affections is her son, Treplev, a wannabe avant-garde writer. Washed up (or so he thinks) at 24 and stewing at his mother's perceived indifference, he's got a whole lotta baggage to carry, and he doesn't carry it well.

He's got the hots for neighbor Nina, but he's loved by Masha, daughter of the unctuous farm steward, whose wife carries a torch for the semi-retired doctor. Masha, in turned, is loved by an impoverished schoolteacher. All of this is overseen by Irina's ailing brother.

And that's pretty much it. The rondeley of misplaced affections, lovers' trysts, hearts broken and occasionally mended forms the matrix of Chekhov's leisurely (three hours here) meditation on the intersection of (often bad) art and (often wasted) lives.

If film, as Hitchcock once said, is life with all of boring parts taken out, Chekhov in the wrong hands can seem like life with all of the exciting parts taken out. I'm not sure, but I'm going to take a stab and suggest that director Viacheslav Dolgachev's not speaking English as a first language may be to blame. Importing him certainly must have seemed like a great idea on paper. Dolgachev is a pillar of the Moscow Art Theater, which was to Chekhov what the Globe was the Shakespeare.

But too often the actors seem to at cross purposes or flatten out or over-emote their lines--especially a shame since Paul Schmidt's terrifically colloquial translation really brings the text alive.

That said, none of the actors--with one exception--are less than very good, and a few much better than that. The exception is the tortured Treplev. Ryan O'Nan has the thin, angular face, handsomely set off by a close-cropped beard, and hunched-over bearing of this Oedipally consumed character. (Hamlet is the ghost that haunts The Seagull, nowhere more than the Hamlet-Gertrude mother-son relationship.)

But he's been directed as though Treplev has acted out his boredom and frustration with a nasty crystal meth or coke problem. The guy is constantly putting down and taking up chairs, curtains, whatever's not nailed down. It's not hard to believe that he'd somehow botch a suicide attempt by aiming a rifle at his head and missing. But there should be subtler motivation for Treplev's self-destructive acts than a hyperthyroid condition.

Marjan Neshat as Masha gets to deliver the play's most iconic line that opens this elegiac mood-play: When asked by her suitor why she always wears black, she answers "I'm in mourning for my life." (It's easy to believe that Tennessee Williams studied Chekhov closely.) Neshat has great diction, and she's almost too beautiful for the love-starved Masha.

She certainly doesn't stand a chance against her rival Nina when she's played by someone as gorgeous as Kelli Garner (late of Ryan Gosling's latest film). When she wears a diaphanous gown that barely covers her figure, she's simply breathtaking, her blond hair flowing down her back like Botticelli's Venus.

The other actors are uniformly good. Wiest is tucked into the literally breathtaking corset-dress of the period, which shows her decolletage to good advantage. If she's a bit hammy, well, so's irina. She's the main reason people are going to go to see this production, and it's far from a bad one. Seeing this actress--one of the truly great screen personalities of her generation--in such an intimate setting reading these lines is worth every penny.

The real revelation, however, is Cumming. I admit I was not a major fan of this actor before this; but the time period fits him like a glove. His shock of raven hair falls in front of his eyes (a seemingly careless gesture that, like everything else about Trigorin, is studiously rehearsed); and a close-cropped bears makes his face resemble Jose Ferrer as Toulouse-Latrec,

His performance perfectly blends the unctuous, bland, narcissistic, showy aspects of Trigorin with the flashes of insight, talent and fellow feeling that keep him from being estranged in the audience's affections. It's hardly worth mentioning--in a perfect world, it wouldn't be remarked on, but we have a tendency to think gay actors can't, well act when it comes to lovemaking--but his love scenes with Wiest are completely believable, affecting and even sexy.

While this Seagull doesn't quite soar to the heavens, it still manages to take off far enough for us to get a glimpse into provincial life outside of Moscow--and the transcendent genius who made it eternal. Having a star of Wiest's magnitude is no more than is deserved for CSC, which has established itself as the most essential off-Broadway repertory house in town.