Who knew Chekhov could be so sexy?
Dressed in her customary proto-goth-girl black, Liz Sklar’s depressive Masha exudes desperate sexual longing for the unavailable estate owner’s nephew, Kostya. As her mother, the estate manager’s wife, Polina, Julia Brothers is so intense in her jealous passion for the local doctor that her gaze threatens to wither a bouquet in another woman’s hand. When Tess Malis Kincaid’s stage diva Irina prostrates herself before her younger lover, the nakedness of her need is almost terrifying.
The web of frustrated passions is so thick in the new “Seagull” that opened Tuesday at Marin Theatre Company that it pretty much overwhelms the usually central story of the ill-fated, aborted love of young would-be writer Kostya (John Tufts) and wannabe great actress Nina (Christine Albright). But the nuanced depths of Chekhov’s portrait of unfulfilled desires come through as never before.
This is, literally, “Seagull” as it has never been seen before, the premiere of a new version by Libby Appel, former head of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. New translations of Chekhov appear all the time, but where playwrights Tom Stoppard and Emily Mann trimmed and rewrote to make the play more actor-friendly, Appel has done the opposite. Working from Allison Horsley’s literal translation, she’s reinstated lines that were cut before its first production.
The result is a revelation. In director Jasson Minadakis’ evenhanded treatment of the ensemble, underscored by Chris Houston’s passionate piano score, “Seagull” becomes more a potent tragicomic group portrait of misplaced erotic and intellectual longings in late 19th century rural Russia than the sad tale of Kostya’s romantic and artistic dead ends.
It runs a bit long. The performances are not all equally strong, and the artifice of Robert Mark Morgan’s intersecting trees set can be distracting. But it’s engrossing.
Tufts is an empathetic Kostya, boyishly enthusiastic even in his arrogance, and Albright is a lovely Nina, though their emotional rupture – and her character – seem muted in this setting. Kincaid’s Irina doesn’t own the stage with the expected leading lady imperiousness, but she’s lovely in her compulsive upstaging of her son, Kostya’s artistic attempts and her wily manipulation of her famous writer lover Trigorin.
Craig Marker inhabits that part with irresistible detachment, flattered lust and bemusement at his attractiveness to women. Howard Swain virtually anchors the sea of loose longings as the older, scruffy country doctor so used to being a babe magnet that he accepts it as his due.
What comes to the fore here are the triangles of Masha’s passion for Kostya while she abuses the devotion of Peter Ruocco’s dogged suitor Medvedenko – and its mirror image in Polina’s pursuit of the doctor under the nose of her officious husband (a terrific Michael Ray Wisely). The poignant lifetime of disappointments of Richard Farrell’s decrepit, sweet Sorin gently underline the general theme.
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