The Seagull

Andrew Upton’s translation of The Seagull for the Sydney Theatre Company he once ran seems more radical, more flamboyant, than Benedict Andrews’ translation a decade ago which he also memorably directed.

That Belvoir production was set outside a south coast fibro holiday retreat; Upton’s is also somewhere Australian, in about 2000, on a now decrepit lakeside farming estate.

It’s home to an enfeebled old hippy (Sean O’Shea) and his agonised playwright nephew Constantine (Harry Greenwood), and a parade of other depressive hangers-on.  Visiting is Constantin’s distracted mother, Irina, a famous if conventional actress (Sigrid Thornton), and her younger lover, a celebrated middle brow novelist, Boris (Toby Schmitz). 

On a lakeside stage, with soundboxes in the reeds, Constantine has recruited his adored young neighbour, the flighty Nina (Mabel Li) to play the “centre of the universe” in his new symbolist play.  When his mother ruins his play with her mockery, Constantine turns suicidal and the revelations begin of everyone’s various sorrows, stagnation, doubts and artistic posturing.

Upton maintains Chekhov’s unfolding structure but the dialogue and subsidiary characters, (a couple now inexplicable), are much altered for comedy, enhanced by director Imara Savage’s witty theatrics.  In the old debate about whether Chekhov wrote comedies or tragedies, he’d likely approve of this version’s comic lampooning of sorrow, even if by interval we are left amused, but with little care for any of these people and their indulgent non-sequiturs.  

Australian directors often use gags to skirt past taking audiences through real pain, but Savage does finally deliver that as Chekhov takes us into winter two years on.  Here even Megan Wilding forsakes her hilarious if familiar eye-rolling attitudes and shows naked sorrow as the now unhappily married Masha.  Everyone is in love with someone else.

Other standouts are Schmitz’s manipulating, self-doubting writer, Mabel Li’s Nina who’s the one who attempts to follow her dreams (to be an actress), Sean O’Shea’s failing Peter and Sigrid Thornton almost underplayed as his egocentric sister.

Savage’s production gives full force to Chekhov’s interest in the social role of an artist, and the desperation to be one to give some meaning to life – and the pain of being ignored.

David Fleischer’s design of an engaging lakeside (lit by Amelia Lever-Davidson) and then various bleak angles of the 1970’s homestead are effective, as are Renee Mulder’s modern character-appropriate costumes.

Max Lyandvert’s sounds of nature echo gently throughout, then pound with the likes of Nick Cave and the Birthday Party – apparently what Andrew Upton first settled on as the likely favourite of this group of misfits. 

Martin Portus

Photographer: Prudence Upton.