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Los Angeles Times
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Ambition in Topanga paradise: Anton Chekhov and John Galsworthy at Theatricum Botanicum
'The Seagull: Malibu' and the seldom-revived 'Strife,' two ambitious offerings in Theatricum Botanicum's outdoor season, are reset in the American past. Ellen Geer, the director, calls her version of Anton Chekhov's play, 'a retelling.' She relocates 'The Seagull,' as a program note specifies and her production flamboyantly conveys, 'to the self-centered Me Generation of the '70s that followed the social upheaval of the '60s.' Malibu, a California world unto its own, hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Santa Monica Mountains on the other, sets up a groovy, glamorous equivalent to the backwater country setting of Chekhov's original, in which all of the characters seem to be suffering from terminal ennui. 'Strife,' John Galsworthy's 1909 social drama about the human cost of a deadlock between management and labor, is transferred from the England-Wales border to Pennsylvania of the 1890s. The play, directed by Ellen Geer and Willow Geer, isn't adapted in the freehanded way of 'The Seagull: Malibu,' and the change of locale doesn't always seem natural. The production's opening scene is slightly disorienting. The directors, called to an emergency meeting at the home of the chairman of the board of the American Steel Corp., have the haughty mien of British aristocrats. Later, at the freezing cold abode of one of the leaders of the strike, the impoverished scene takes on unmistakable Dickensian notes. There are a fair number of Irish accents in the mix, but I wouldn't have been surprised if one of the actors broke out his best cockney. 'The Seagull: Malibu' isn't always consistent in setting up the time period, but the production's larkish approach is infectious. Arkadina (Susan Angelo) plays the self-absorbed actress mother who sold out to Hollywood. Defensive about her age, she's even more prickly about the condescending attitude of her would-be avant-garde playwright son, Constantine (Christopher Glenn Gilstrap), who basically thinks she's a B-movie hack. Gilstrap's Constantine looks more like a future yacht rock frontman than a theatrical renegade. Angelo's Arkadina seems destined to have her career resurrected in the next decade by a recurring role on either 'Dallas' or 'Dynasty.' The charged Oedipal dynamics between them are vividly fleshed out. Willow Geer plays Masha, the Chekhov character who insouciantly declares that she's in mourning for her life. Her Masha is a pothead and sloppy self-dramatizing drunk, hopelessly in love with Constantine, who only has eyes for Nina (Caroline Quigley). Masha confides her discontent to Dr. Dore (Daniel Reichert), a Gestalt therapist who, like Chekhov's more traditional Dr. Dorn, has an empirical worldview that stands in stark contrast to the romantic dreaminess of everyone else at the estate. Thad (Tim Halligan), Arkadina's rechristened brother, suffers from fragile health and a sketchy backstory. Halligan, however, gives the character definition, especially when advocating for his nephew and risking the wrath of his volatile, penny-pinching sister. Trigger (Rajiv Shah) is the new version of Trigorin, the established writer who, as Arkadina's younger lover, resists becoming her property even as he enjoys the perks of their celebrity relationship. The boldly amusing and good-natured production makes the most of the fading California hippie era. The final act, unfortunately, is dreadfully acted. Quigley's Nina is a delight in the play's early going, all innocence and starry-eyed enthusiasm. But there appears to be no artistic growth when she returns to encounter a still-lovesick Constantine. Quigley's acting is as melodramatic and artificial as Nina's was said to be before her travails and losses transformed her talent. This isn't the production's only failure of subtlety, but it's surely the most consequential. Still, if you can cope with a deflating finale, there's much to enjoy in this update of 'The Seagull,' not least the glorious Topanga summer night backdrop, which translates Chekhov's setting into a rustic West Coast paradise. I can't remember ever having seen a Galsworthy play, so I was grateful for Theatrium Botanicum's vision in producing 'Strife.' Awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1932, Galsworthy is better known for his novels than his plays. (The 1967 BBC television adaptation of his Forsyte family chronicles brought him immense posthumous acclaim.) 'Strife' is an intelligent thesis play, not on the verbal or theatrical level of George Bernard Shaw's sparkling comedy of ideas but impressive all the same for its complexity of argument and compassionate determination to understand all sides of a problem. The play is especially resonant at this moment when workers are treated like items in a budget that can be erased without regard for human consequences. There's a rousing speech about the God of Capital, 'a white-faced, stony-hearted monster' that says, ''I'm very sorry for you, poor fellows — you have a cruel time of it, I know,' but will not give you one dollar of its dividends to help you have a better time.' These words are spoken by David Roberts (Gerald C. Rivers), a labor hard-liner and rabble-rouser, who is the ideological enemy and (mirror image of) John Anthony (Franc Ross), the chairman of American Steel who refuses to give an inch to the demands of the workers. In portraying these intractable figures in equivalent moral terms, Galsworthy reveals, if not his privileged background, then his muddled thinking on economic justice. But this large-cast drama (one of the reasons it's rarely produced today) provides a broad spectrum of human experience, adding depth and nuance to what is undeniably a vigorous debate. Enid Underwood (Emily Bridges), Mr. Anthony's married daughter, is desperate to help her ailing servant, Annie Roberts (Earnestine Phillips), whose health has been destroyed since her husband, David, has been on strike. Enid's sympathy is strong, but her class allegiance is stronger, setting up an intriguing character study that takes us into the heart of the societal dilemma Galsworthy diligently dissects. The acting is often at the level of community theater — broad, strident and overly exuberant. Galsworthy, to judge by this revival, seems to be working far outside the tradition of realism. I wish the directors had reined in some of the hoary excesses of the performers, but I felt fortunate to experience a play that might not be an indelible classic but is too incisive to be forgotten.
Scotsman
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Caroline Quentin: Jonathan Creek star to perform in Chekov play in Edinburgh seen 'through Scottish lens'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Caroline Quentin is to star alongside a cast of Scottish actors in a production of an iconic Russian play told 'through a Scottish lens'. The Men Behaving Badly and Jonathan Creek star is to perform in Anton Chekov's The Seagull at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh next season in the first show for new artistic director James Brining. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The facade of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh. | Eamonn McGoldrick She said she was looking forward to playing in a 'proper' theatre in Edinburgh, decades after her 'first real successes as an actor' on the Fringe. Ms Quentin said: 'This production of The Seagull is the realisation of so many dreams. I have wanted to play Arkadina since I was in a production playing Masha nearly 40 years ago. 'The city of Edinburgh gave me my first real successes as an actor, on the Fringe with An Evening with Gary Lineker, Trench Kiss and Live Bed Show, all by Arthur Smith, and this year I finally get to play in a 'proper' theatre and they don't come any more beautiful and prestigious than the Lyceum.' Mr Brining, who recently moved back to Scotland after a stint at the Leeds Playhouse, said the play, which will be performed from October 9 to November 1, had been carefully selected as his first performance. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ms Quentin will take takes on the pivotal role of Arkadina, a once-celebrated actress who dominates every room she enters. Her son, the tormented young playwright Konstantin, yearns to escape her shadow, revolutionise theatre and win the heart of Nina - a luminous young woman with dreams of the stage. But when Nina's gaze turns to Arkadina's lover, the celebrated writer Trigorin, egos and passions collide with truly devastating consequences. Mr Brining said The Seagull would 'still be Russian' and have 'Russian references', but 'through a Scottish lens'. He said: 'The play is an examination of theatre itself, which is why it felt like such a perfect introduction for myself as a director in this new role. It felt like a playful choice, in some respects, for my first show, to do something that actually centres, to an extent, on what we're actually doing here, making theatre.' Mr Brining added: 'One of the reasons I was really keen to come back to Scotland to work in the Lyceum was the opportunity to make that kind of work.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Caroline Quentin in The Seagull. Pic: Steph Pyne and Mihaela Bodlovic | Lyceum During his time in Leeds, Mr Brining said he had commissioned a range of 'substantial musicals and opera'. 'I've loved doing that and I want to continue to do that kind of work,' he said. 'But what keen to do over time when I'm here is to make a diverse range of work in order to appeal to a diverse audience. At the Lyceum, I've got the opportunity to do the great plays as well, and The Seagull is exactly that. It is the kind of play we should be doing. It's an option for the Edinburgh audience to reengage in that play or maybe see it for the first time.'
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The week in theatre: The Seagull; Punch
Fresh from the seaside, I went in warily to Thomas Ostermeier's production of The Seagull. How could that bird be an image of vulnerability, when on today's beaches gulls are predators, strutting like bankers, swooping on passersby? What's more, it is so hard to pull off the crucial scene in which Nina – betrayed by her lover, her ambitions in ruins – flaps desolately around calling herself a seagull. Tragedy often looks like histrionics. Which raises the question of why critics suspect the celebrated actor Arkadina of inauthenticity because of her profession, while Nina, the failed actor, is considered to be simply sincere. And yet in this new adaptation by Ostermeier and Duncan Macmillan, Chekhov's 1896 drama brims with interest, even when snatched brutally into the present: sun loungers! Quad bikes! This is the best ever play about writers, and a real quizzing of drama. Even better, as David Hare, the author of a very good version, has argued, it's a play about change and struggle, in which theatre is 'only the metaphor'. Time and again, The Seagull is an engine for extraordinary performances. Cate Blanchett is a magnetic and maddening Arkadina. Full of allure and affectation, she gives not so much a portrait of a bad actor as of bad actoriness: leaping in a purple boiler suit; doing the splits (applause from the audience) in glitter trousers; tap dancing, flinging herself to the ground, fidgeting and rustling papers when the spotlight is on someone else. Yet, in the best Chekhov tradition, there is no single spotlight. Almost every character has a moment when the stage takes on the colour of their personality, though I wish they did so without seizing one of the too-ubiquitous mics: the text is diminished by amplification. Emma Corrin, with Peter Pan candour, makes Nina unusually dangerous as well as artless. At the moment when most under the spell of the dramatist Trigorin (a stiff-with-self-regard Tom Burke), Nina slaps him: exactly how an uncertain young girl might overreact. As Masha, Tanya Reynolds has no trace of ornamental melancholy: she is truly depressed, sunk-shouldered in a droopy long skirt, vaping. And Jason Watkins – with bad shorts and a blue supermarket plastic bag – is a wily, funny, heart-wrenching Sorin. I saw a transcendent production in 2007, directed by Ian Rickson, with Kristin Scott Thomas as Arkadina (both were there on this press night). On Hildegard Bechtler's Royal Court set – dark wood and gull colours – Carey Mulligan flew high as Nina, alongside Mackenzie Crook and Chiwetel Ejiofor. No production has surpassed that for me, but this utterly different vivacity at the Barbican is proof of the morphing, soaring power of The Seagull. It is extraordinary, the gathering force of Punch. How it begins as a singular history and ends as a universal statement. How – as the theatre is uniquely equipped to do – it actually incarnates change. This is a 2024 Nottingham Playhouse production of a real-life Nottingham story. Who better to write it than James Sherwood Graham, who grew up in Nottinghamshire. And who better to spell out the nationwide implications than Graham, whose football-as-portrait-of-a-country play Dear England has just arrived in an updated version at the National. Actually, more than nationwide: Adam Penford's production of Punch goes to Broadway this autumn. Based on Jacob Dunne's autobiographical memoir Right from Wrong (2022), Punch is a history of casual violence and catastrophic consequence. As a teenager high on drugs and gang pressure, Dunne lands an unmotivated punch on a stranger and ends up imprisoned for manslaughter. Yet it is also a story of repair. A few years after his incarceration, Dunne has a degree, a family and a sense of purpose. Under the auspices of the restorative justice process, he has been brought together with the dead man's devastated parents. Together, though always shadowed, they have begun to understand each another. To convince, the history needs gradual, delicate unfolding. Penford gives it the right pace: as if we were watching in real time. Though the evening begins with some over-jittery choreography, and though the social message is heavily underlined, tremendous acting provides a sense of things being held always in a tremulous balance. The puncher says: 'I didn't mean it.' His victim's father observes that a punch is not an accident. David Shields puts in a career-making performance as the young man. He is at first beside himself: fidgety-limbed, his speech a string of blurred sounds that don't always coalesce into words, his words only sometimes reaching towards sense. Slowly he comes into focus: tighter mentally, physically, emotionally. As the victim's mother, Julie Hesmondhalgh is remarkable. Though utterly forthright, her performance is full of small, self-deprecating, what-am-I-like gestures that you might think would register only in closeup. She makes comedy and hesitation betray the tangle of her feelings. Looking for the word 'punitive' she comes up with 'Pontefract'; she stumbles over the word 'restorative'. Tony Hirst is impressive as her husband: steadily sorrowful, kind, unforgiving. She is in a furry dressing gown, he in chunky cable knit. Alec Boaden makes a memorable stage debut. There is a strong, overtly stated social message about the waste of life here: why, one character asks, do people understand that, left to themselves, potholes will turn into gaping holes, but fail to recognise that cracks in humans and their circumstances will turn into abysms. Punch persuades us that this need not be so. Star ratings (out of five) The Seagull ★★★★Punch ★★★★ The Seagull is at the Barbican theatre, London, until 5 April Punch is at the Young Vic, London, until 26 April
Telegraph
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Seagull: Cate Blanchett delivers the goods – and does the splits
Cate Blanchett is back on the London stage for the first time in six years, playing the feted, self-absorbed, glamorous actress Arkadina in Chekhov's first theatrical masterpiece The Seagull (1896). The production, whose stellar wattage is boosted by Emma Corrin and Tom Burke (the former plays Nina, the young would-be actress whom Burke's famous writer Trigorin falls for, despite being tied to Arkadina), has seen a box-office stampede. Anyone expecting genteel period-fidelity for this anatomy of dissatisfaction and emotional meets existential crisis on a rural (Russian) estate should note that the film star doesn't make conventional theatre choices. Whether it's Susan Traherne, the wartime secret agent falling apart in David Hare's Plenty, or When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, a dark tale of abuse by Martin Crimp based on Samuel Richardson's Pamela – she likes material with a provocative edge. That last, notorious London project saw Blanchett strapping on a dildo, and simulating sex. There's nothing so wayward here, and German director Thomas Ostermeier hardly invites uproar in his treatment, using a text by Duncan Macmillan that stays broadly faithful to the original play. Compared to Jamie Lloyd's tedious sedentary version a few years back, it's almost mainstream. Even so, the language is contemporary, allowing expletives, and the approach is experimental, in keeping with Chekhov's form-pushing radicalism. Liberties are taken from the moment Zachary Hart's Medvedenko arrives on an off-road bike, surveys the scene (a clump of bullrushes set amid a wide sky, the audience situated where the lake would be), and engages in banter ('Who wants a bit of Chekhov?') and a warm-up song (by Billy Bragg). He then converses with Tanya Reynolds' Masha while they play badminton. There's more borderline gimmickry where that came from (the gathering at the al fresco presentation by Konstantin, Arkadina's son, don daft VR headsets). You fear Ostermeier will overdo the comedy, but there's a palpable freshness to his approach. Even if one can do without some of the innovations (I loved the aching deployment of the Stranglers' hit Golden Brown, less so a blast of howlingly loud intermission music), Blanchett's performance is unmissable. She's treading in gilded footsteps – Judi Dench, Kristin Scott Thomas and Meryl Streep among them – but, emerging from the thicket as if landed from LA, in shades and purple jump-suit, she makes this diva of a mother her own. She trades on those magazine-cover looks and air of fame, teasing us, in a work that plays with ideas of artifice and reality, with what's put-on, what's sincere. Some of her antics are tactical – kittenishly dancing to demonstrate her residual youth, with the splits thrown in – but she has the measure of a woman using lofty control to mask mid-life and maternal pain. Corrin lends Nina a winning elfin energy and gawky charm, although Burke's obsessive Trigorin is less dashing, more subdued than expected. Among a generally fine cast, hats off to Jason Watkins as Arkadina's kindly, ever-more ailing brother, and to stage debutant Kodi Smit-McPhee, the picture of youthful vulnerability as the neglected, self-destructive Konstantin. Is this long night worth north of £200 for the best seats? Well, the play will surely return soon; but a cast like this is a rare event.
The Independent
16-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Cate Blanchett gives verdict on whether celebrity-led plays are ruining the West End
Cate Blanchett has shared her opinion on whether she thinks celebrity-led plays are ruining West End theatre. The Oscar-winning actor, 55, is set to star in Thomas Ostermeier's new production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull at the Barbican. The six-week run marks her return to the stage for the first time in six years. Blanchett at the National Theatre in 2019, shortly before the pandemic. The Seagull is produced by Wessex Grove, who previously brought Andrew Scott 's one-man rendition of Vanya and an adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life, starring James Norton, to the stage. Speaking to The Guardian, Blanchett claimed that 'cynical' stunt-casting – in which production companies employ star power to fuel ticket sales – is fine 'as long as theatre does not become homogeneous'. Celebrity-led productions have become increasingly common in recent years. Emily in Paris star Lily Collins, for example, made her West End debut in a widely panned production of Bess Wohl's Barcelona last year, while several celebrities, including singers Cheryl Cole and Lily Allen, have starred in 2:22 A Ghost Story. 'It's about how that person is used and whether their celebrity is harnessed to the cart of the production in a positive way, because sometimes that can really work,' Blanchett said. 'But it's the follow-spot theatre that you're talking about, where the lead actress or actor is slightly more brightly lit than others… You used the word 'cynical'. I think you can smell that.' Elsewhere in the interview, Blanchett said the secret to a successful production is believability. 'In everything you do, you're very aware that you're walking that line with an audience where you're saying, 'We're doing this for you but it is absolutely happening,'' she explained. 'Theatre's like a magic trick. Are you coming with me? Are we going here together?' Blanchett will star as Arkadina in Ostermeier's forthcoming adaptation of Russian writer Anton Chekhov 's play alongside Mad Max actor Tom Burke in the role of Trigorin and Emma Corrin as Nina. Chekhov's 1985 play follows Arkadina, a dominating personality who must navigate a series of personal conflicts when she visits her family's country estate. Her husband is romantically pursued by a younger actor, while her son attempts to break free of Arkadina's influence. Speaking to Porter earlier this month, Blanchett revealed she finds herself frequently inspired by youngs actors, including her co-star Corrin. 'I'm just amazed by not only their aliveness of their point of view, but also their technical reserves in ways that I couldn't have even imagined having or possessing when I was their age,' she said. The Seagull will show at The Barbican in London for six weeks, starting on 26 February 2025.
