The following two reviews were broadcast on Friday, March 14, 2014 CIUT FRIDAY MORNING 89.5. FM between 9 am and 10 am: The Seagull at the Berkeley Street Theatre, Upstairs until March 23, and The Carousel at the Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs until March 30.
The guest host was Phil Taylor
(PHIL)
Good Friday morning. It’s theatre fix time with Lynn Slotkin our theatre critic and passionate playgoer. Hi Lynn
(LYNN)
Hi Phil
(PHIL)
What do you have for us this week?
(LYNN)
I have two shows that are emotionally charged and might raise the temperature of their audiences.
The first is The Seagull by Anton Chekhov done by a new company called the Chekhov Collective. And the other is The Carousel by Jennifer Tremblay with translation by Shelley Tepperman, produced by Nightwood Theatre.
(PHIL)
Let’s start with Chekhov and The Seagull. Give us a short synopsis for those of use who can’t remember our high school lit. classes.
(LYNN)
It’s about unrequited love, loneliness, missed opportunities, lamenting them and doing nothing about them. We are on an estate in Russia. Irina Arkadina is an actress who owns the estate but is rarely there. She comes for a visit. The other characters are her son Konstantin, a young man in his 20s, living in his mother’s shadow. Konstantin hates her kind of theatre and writes a play he thinks is a new genre. He prepares to put it on for his mother, her lover Trigorin a celebrated writer, and the rest of the folks on the estate. It will star Nina, a young innocent woman.
Konstantin’s play is incomprehensible and Konstantin is wounded when everybody gets bored, especially his mother. We see the relationships played out instantly. Konstantin is in love with Nina. Nina is smitten by Trigorin. Trigorin contends with Arkadina but then takes up with Nina. Arkadina loves Trigorin but not as much as she loves herself. And so it goes. So much angst. In Chekhov’s world this is initially hilarious, until of course the seriousness bubbles up.
(PHIL)
What is Chekhov’s appeal?
(LYNN)
His plays are so layered and dense with emotions and attitudes. His characters are full bodied, emotionally charged and hilarious without their knowing it. No wonder actors love doing his plays.
(PHIL)
Tell us about the Chekhov Collective.
(LYNN)
The Chekhov Collective is a group of actors dedicated to exploring the play using the acting techniques of Michael Chekhov, Anton Chekhov’s nephew. Through workshops, readings, and careful study and interaction, the group worked on The Seagull for a year.
It’s a group with varying degrees of experience, and it shows. In a program note director, Peggy Coffey expanded a bit on the thinking of Michael Chekhov and how the actors explored the play. In the program and other references terms such as ‘architecture’ ‘expansion/contraction’, special relationships etc. are used to explain some of the reference points. Some media were even invited to attend special workshops that put Michael Chekhov’s techniques into practice.
(PHIL)
Does knowing Michael Chehkov’s techniques with actors, improve your understanding of the play?
(LYNN)
Here’s the thing, I look on my job of theatre critic as a professional member of an audience. But when reviewing a play I don’t really care how an actor gets to realize his/her character, as long as he/she does it.
As long as all concerned realize the point and intention of the play. The audience doesn’t care about the specific lingo—architecture, expansion/contraction etc. We care about how well the play is done.
(PHIL)
So how well is the play done?
(LYNN)
I think the Chekhov Collective deserve a lot of credit for making their own work and luck. For many in the cast this is their first theatrical venture. For many others, more comfortable in television, this is an opportunity to do a part in which they might not usually be cast. So this group got together to put on a play and took a year to explore it before they thought it was ready. Bravo to that tenacity, even though the results are uneven.
Rob Gray’s simple set of slat work gives a feel of a sprawling Russian estate that has seen better days. As Arkadina, Rena Polley has the bearing of a celebrated, self-absorbed woman who is easily riled and easily bored. As Trigorin, Patrick Garrow is always watchful, as an accomplished writer would be. You get the sense of his being quietly obsessive about noting a phrase of word for a future short story. And you get a sense of his cold heart when he talks of writing a short story about a man who, for want of nothing better to do, destroys a life. This is a reference to what will happen to Nina.
The younger members of the company don’t fare as well. As Nina, Nicole Wilson has a sweet innocence initially but as the play went on, she too lacked depth in her performance. Riley Gilchrist certainly has Konstantin’s brooding established. But I find that his tears in the last scene is a bit of overkill.
I also thing the director Peggy Coffey is fresh to exploring Chekhov and it shows.
(PHIL)
How so?
(LYNN)
I would have thought that with the time the company took to explore character the director would have led some actors to deeper performances than just skimming the surface.
Too often a character who is talking to another character gives his/her lines looking out to the audience and not to the character to whom he/she is talking. That interrupts any connection characters have to each other. I can appreciate that Coffey wants to establish some kind of mood at the very beginning by playing the melody of a song sung while the lights are down. But keeping the audience in the dark while the whole melodic line is sung, and it goes on for several seconds, does the opposite. It makes the audience impatient for the play to begin. If we don’t know the song or the melody, then how can we expect to understand the mood Coffey is trying to create?
I hope the cast had a fruitful experience exploring the play. Next time I hope the result is more cohesive in serving the play and the audience.
(PHIL)
And tell us about The Carousel
(LYNN)
It’s part of a trilogy; two years ago we saw The List now we have The Carousel about the same woman several years later. It’s interesting that in The List the woman was an obsessive list maker, meticulous. Now, in The Carousel, that meticulousness is not as evident.
It’s beautifully written by Jennifer Tremblay and exquisitely translated by Shelley Tepperman. About three generations of Quebec women. The impetus is that our narrator, referred to simply in the program as The Woman, is called home to Northern Quebec to visit her mother in the hospital. The mother is dying.
The waiting makes The Woman think of her feisty, hard drinking Grandmother, whose wisdom she could use right now. She thinks of her angry, bullying grandfather. She thinks about why her mother Florence was sent to a convent for seven years when she was so young. And The Woman thinks about her own marriage, children and her recent infidelity. Memory goes round and round, like a Carousel.
This is a one person play with several characters. Jennifer Tremblay’s writing is rich, delicate, muscular, sensual, even erotic in a tasteful way, and her translator, Shelley Tepperman captures all of that dazzling language.
(PHIL)
How does it work as a one person play?
(LYNN)
It stars the wondrous Allegra Fulton as The Woman, who was on the show last week. With just the subtlest of body language and a modulation of her voice you know exactly what character is speaking. The Grandmother talks in a certain voice; her bully husband in another and so on.
The Woman is composed, compassionate when dealing with her dying mother, and totally uninhibited when she is picked up by a man in a bar. You almost want to look away because we know the character is in a tricky situation. But Fulton is so compelling an actress, so loaded with nuance and shadings that you are gripped. The whole production is startling with so many revelations, all of them revealed in a gradual, believable way.
The set by Denyse Karn is a hospital corridor in perspective with a chair outside a room. You can see an empty hospital bed in the room off the corridor.
For the whole of the production, Fulton is both quiet and thoughtful and animated. But it’s not a busy production thanks to her director Megan Follows.
(PHIL)
This is Megan Follows’ directorial debut, isn’t it?
(LYNN)
It is. She is an actress in her own right—grew up playing Anne of Green Gables. And is now a mature actress who has done all kinds of substantial theatre. But she wanted to direct and Nightwood Artistic director, Kelly Thornton, gave her a chance here. It’s a stunning debut. She has such sensitivity to make a scene work.
In a scene when the daughter is visiting her dying mother, there is a rectangle of white light on the floor. (Thank you Kimberly Purtell).
Fulton pulls her chair close to it, with her hand out gently. Voila, the mother’s hospital bed and the daughter holding her unseen hand. The audience fills in the rest. Both director and actress have carefully realized all the details, subtext and surprises of this terrific play.
(PHIL)
Thanks Lynn. That’s Lynn Slotkin our theatre critic and passionate playgoer. You can read Lynn’s Blog at www.slotkinletter.com
On twitter @slotkinletter
The Seagull plays at the Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs until March 23:
The Carousel plays at the Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs, until March 30.