Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, translated by Karen Vickery. Chaika Theatre at ACT Hub, 14 Apinifex St, Kingston, Canberra April 10-21 2024.
Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night April 11
Directed by Caitlin Baker and Tony Night
Characters:
Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina – an actress, married surname Trepleva
Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev – Irina's son, a young man
Pyotr Nikolayevich Sorin – Irina's brother, owner of the country estate
Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya – a young woman, the daughter of a rich landowner
Ilya Afanasyevich Shamrayev – a retired lieutenant and the manager of Sorin's estate
Polina Andreyevna – Shamrayev's wife
Masha – her daughter
Boris Alexeyevich Trigorin – a novelist
Yevgeny Sergeyevich Dorn – a doctor
Semyon Semyonovich Medvedenko – a teacher in love with Masha.
Yakov – a workman
Cook or Chef
Maid
Cast:
Joel Horwood – Konstantin (Kostya)
Amy Kowalczuk – Polina
Arran McKenna – Ilya Shamrayev
Neil McLeod – Pyotr Sorin
Natasha Vickery – Nina
Meaghan Stewart – Masha
Michael Sparks – Dr Dorn
James McMahon – Boris Trigorin
Cameron Thomas - Semyon
Karen Vickery - Irina
The translation of Seagull (without ‘The’, since Russian doesn’t use definite articles) into up-to-date OMG educated Canberra English (social platform style) is only problematical if you are like me.
I have always taken it as read that Chekhov, in what he called a comedy, was satirising with serious intent a specific group of people – the upper class Russians of his day, 1895, whose wealth and lives as landed gentry was beginning to disintegrate.
As Wikipedia describes it: The Seagull is generally considered to be the first of his four major plays. It dramatizes the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin Treplev.
The joke of the day, I guess, was that in the character of Kostya, Anton was satirising himself. Except that he hadn’t shot himself.
So, does Chaika (ie Seagull) Theatre’s production work today as a satiric comedy? Yes and No, I think.
Because that kind of landed gentry – especially since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918 – doesn’t exist any more, in Russia or Australia, it’s a bit confusing when they have names and refer to things so obviously Russian while speaking like us. For Chekhov’s audience, everyone falling so extremely in love with everyone else – and the gunshots as Kostya tries and finally does kill himself – is funny.
Yet, of course, there is a dark side hinted at in the working class characters: Yakov, the Chef and the Maid. These are obsequious servants. In the ‘standard’ translation (Penguin) by Elisaveta Pen, as Irina is packing to leave she gives the Chef a rouble saying, “Here’s a rouble, between you three.”
They reply with Chef: “Thank you kindly, madam. Good journey to you! We’re most grateful for your kindness”; Yakov: “God-speed to you!”; while the Maid says nothing.
Without having Karen Vickery’s script to hand, I can’t give details, but she has cut or incorporated these parts into her play.
On the other hand, Vickery has turned Nina’s speeches as “This common soul of the world” in Kostya’s “Decadent School” play where “The souls of Alexander the Great, of Caesar, of Shakespeare, of Napoleon, and of the basest leech are contained in me!” into a plea for action on climate change as “my voice rings dismally through this void unheard by anybody.”
Playing Act One outdoors works very well for creating a sense of reality as the characters come and go to set up the stage near the lake as described by Checkhov. We had no problem accepting that Trigorin had just ducked down to the lake, the real one, for another spot of fishing, even if it was dark because the moon hadn’t come up as expected – and fortunately Masha’s prediction that there would be a storm didn’t happen. It felt as though we were not watching actors, but found ourselves among these rather peculiar people in emotional turmoils whom you might easily meet in Kingston on Lake Burley Griffin foreshore. Though it was amusing when someone said they could hear music, while we heard a not very distant train shunting at Kingston Station and a plane taking off a bit further away at Canberra Airport.
So going back into the theatre felt like going into the family home. We were in the lounge room, with doors to other rooms and the front door behind us, where we had just come in.
Using modern English certainly worked to make believable characters for us. Some 30 years ago I worked for Carol Woodrow searching for the least stilted translation of The Seagull for our intended production for her Canberra Theatre Company. I thought the translation by David Magarshack was better for acting than Elisaveta Pen’s, but that show never went on because a major sponsorship deal unexpectedly fell apart.
But I suspect that Vickery’s translation is the best for an aspect of the comedy. The OMG including the occasional F word as a style made characterisations – especially her own performance of Irina, and Joel Horwood’s as Konstantin – forceful without becoming farcical. Farce may be more funny, while more stilted would have blunted the humour. The very final scene in this translation and performance was fascinating because everyone’s reactions to the gunshot – from the terribly fearful shock that Natasha Vickery’s Nina must feel when she hears about what has happened, to the let’s just carry on playing cards from Amy Kowalczuk’s Polina – left us in the audience a bit stunned, not knowing what it all meant or how we should respond, until the lights went out and we realised that’s the end.
This makes this Seagull something more in the line of absurdism – is it funny or is it not? How should we respond to this relationship quagmire, representing as it does what we see around us all over the world? What will be the end of that?
This is the strength of the success of this production - that this translation into our language makes Chekhov's play reflect how people around the world are feeling today, facing, as many think, the possibility of World War III.
