The Seagull

For its Adelaide Festival production of The Seagull the State Theatre Company of South Australia uses traverse staging with minimal stage dressing and props as an inspired means of disengaging audience members from their surrounds, effectively immersing them only in the mood and story of this 1890’s classic piece.

Sensitively directed by Geordie Brookman and staged in the State Theatre Company’s atmospheric Scenic Workshop, the Company’s production of Anton Chekhov’s famous play is a new adaptation by Australian playwright Hilary Bell.

Despite the stark wooden platform before them, audience members need little more than an amusing, almost pedantic placement of folding chairs by estate manager’s daughter Masha, together with folk music from schoolteacher Medvedenko, in order to imagine the initial setting is a country garden on a summer’s day. From the start, performances are as nuanced and subtle as the staging and we realise not only is there to be a gathering of friends but also that underlying tensions are already well-developed within the arriving group.

The Seagull is a story of unrequited love and unfulfilled dreams. It follows the passions and conflicts between famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingénue Nina Zarechnaya, the fading actress Irina Arkadina and her son, the symbolist playwright Konstantin Treplev.

Former State Theatre Company Artistic Director, Rosalba Clemente is sublime as the superficial and vain actress, Irina Arkadina. Her display of pathetic desperation when Boris Trigorin asks her to release him from his ties as her lover is wonderful. Renato Musolino embodies the moody, controlling novelist Trigorin, a heartless man who cannot resist his lust for naïve and inexperienced young actress, Nina Zarechnaya.

After Hollywood success in films such as The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and having recently starred alongside Naomi Watts in Adoration, Xavier Samuel has returned to his home town to play Irina Arkadina’s playwright son, Konstantin Treplev. His performance as the tortured young writer is excellent and particularly commanding in the final act. Lucy Fry is wonderful as Nina, the focus of Konstantin’s unrequited love. In the final act Fry’s performance is heartbreakingly real as Nina stands broken and desperate in the freezing rain.

Paul Blackwell and Terence Crawford are terrific as the ailing Sorin and Doctor Dorn respectively, while Chris Pitman and Lizzy Falkland are delightfully amusing in their portrayals of verbose estate manager Shamrayev and his lustful yet sexually frustrated wife Polina.

Without doubt, audience favourites are Matilda Bailey as headstrong Masha and Matthew Gregan as the wonderfully warm and tender Medvedenko. Gregan is also fantastic in his additional capacity as composer and musician for the production; he is everywhere, singing and playing various musical accompaniments while in character and even providing an innovative introduction to the timeline of the last act of the play.

Ailsa Paterson’s costumes are very effective, with the scarlet gowns of Irina and the youthful colours worn by Nina contrasting against the duller creams, browns and blacks worn by the other characters.

Geoff Cobham’s set and lighting design is simple but evocative. Reflections from a lake are effected by little more than light shining through a doorway. Driving rain and even swirling snow are also simply derived, yet brilliantly effective.

South Australia’s State Theatre Company is to be congratulated on a superb start to its 2014 season.

Lesley Reed

Images: Lucy Fry and Xavier Samuel; Terence Crawford, Rosalba Clemente, Paul Blackwell and Matilda Bailey & Xavier Samuel. Photographer: Shane Reid.