The Seagull
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Cititour.com Review
As this season is rapidly proving, there can be many reasons for revisiting oft-performed plays. For some, it is can be as great as viewing the total reimagining of a work like Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie; for others, it can be as simple as watching Orlando Bloom bare his chest in Romeo & Juliet.
In the case of acclaimed British director Max Stafford Clark’s revival of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, now being presented by the Culture Project at 45 Bleecker, I had two initial reasons for wanting to see this masterwork for the seventh time. The first was to see how award-winning playwright Thomas Kilroy’s decision to move the play from Russia to Ireland would impact the work. The answer turns out to be almost imperceptibly – except that Kilroy has changed the name of every one of the play’s characters.
The second was to witness the acting of Trudie Styler, heretofore best known to me as the wife of rock superstar Sting, as the grand, vain actress Arkadina (now called Isobel). Elegantly swanning across the stage in Ilana Somogyi’s gorgeous dresses, Styler captures the lady’s self-absorption and insecurity quite well, even if she can’t erase the memory of such superlative predecessors as Meryl Streep.
What I hadn’t expected – and what turns out the production’s greatest asset – is the star-making performance of Rachel Spencer Hewitt as Lily (the Nina character). This remarkable young actress miraculously transforms herself from the bright-eyed ingénue of the first act to the lovestruck young woman who moves to London to the slightly mad creature who returns home in the final act with a finesse I’ve rarely encountered.
Moreso, she does it without much help from her leading men. The usually wonderful Alan Cox is oddly miscast as the writer Mr. Aston (the Trigorin character). Sadly, the talked-about brilliance and the beauty that make him so desirable to both Lily and Isobel is nowhere in evidence. And Slate Holmgren is thoroughly unpleasant as the self-pitying Constantine, almost never engendering our sympathy for this clearly troubled young man.
Luckily, Stafford-Clark coaxes much better performances out of the rest of his cast, with particular kudos due to Amanda Quaid as the melancholy, sharp-tongued Mary, Stella Feelihy as her desperately unhappy mother, Pauline, and the excellent Rufus Collins as the ultra-rational Dr. Hickey.
While this Seagull neither soars nor lays an egg, it definitely flies high whenever Hewitt is on the stage.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
http://cultureproject.org/current/seagull
Cast
Trudie Styler, Rufus Collins, Alex Cox, Stella Feehily, Slate Holmgren, Rachel Spencer Hewitt, Ryan David O'Byrne, Amanda Quaid, Tim Ruddy, and Kenneth Ryan
Open/Close Dates
Opening 10/3/2013
Closing 11/3/2013
Box Office
(866) 811-4111
Theatre Info
The Lynn Redgrave Theater at Culture Project
45 Bleecker St.
Neighborhood: East Village
New York, NY 10012
Map
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