OUR TOWN at Ford’s Theatre Offers Sneak Peek For New Offering at Theater J

A bold new production of Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN has opened at Ford’s Theatre, directed by Stephen Rayne who did such a magnificent job last season directing the Theater J/Ford’s Theatre co-production of PARADE. The new staging brings back some of the cast members of PARADE and reunites Rayne with scene designer Tony Cisek, who does so many brilliant sets for so many companies around town, including us. Now you wouldn’t think there’s much design at play in this production of OUR TOWN. What there is, for a good long while, is very little set.

Oh, there’s the cantilevered, radically-raked stage, swooping down from back-to-front at most-likely the maximum allowable gradation. And there are the 40+ identical white chairs. Now these are chairs one mostly expects to find in Act III of the play, in the simple (though devastating) cemetery scene, and here they are in this production, more chairs than needed laid out in rows for Act I. Clearly, this production team has a surprise up its sleeves for Act III. And, boy, do it ever! I’ll let the students explain. Suffice to say that between Acts I and II I didn’t see a curtain descend to mask any scene changes. Between Acts II and III while I was out getting a drink of water, a black screen was quietly dropped. And when it was lifted to start Act III, a totally startling, brilliant pay-off was in place. That, my friends, is the definition of a “coup de théâtre” (or a “sensational bit of stagecraft!) and a brilliant realization of the truly magical, stark, haunting specter that is the cemetery scene in Act III.

I look forward to reading what others had to say about OUR TOWN, whether it be their first time seeing it, or, like actress Kim Schraf (a frequent Theater J performer and cast member of OUR TOWN who so graciously spoke to our group on Thursday night, together with PARADE cast member Kevin McCallister) someone who’s seen (and been in) the play multiple times. Never have we seen a physicalization of this play in the way Rayne and Cisek allowed us to experience it.

But this Ford’s production is certainly not the first racially integrated version of the play. Our own Delia Taylor and her mother Deborah staged a similarly conceived, non-traditional version at The Theatre Lab. And then there’s this version of the play performed by young students in Compton, LA — do check out this incredibly video documentation; OT: Our Town is a documentary which looks at Dominguez High School’s brave experiment and the people who struggled to make it happen.

A radically new visioning of OUR TOWN is also on our minds as we introduce to you the first glimpse of what we’re looking to produce at Theater J next season: The world premiere staging of Darrah Cloud’s reimagining of Wilder’s classic, moved from Grover’s Corner, NH to Skokie, Illinois. The play is called OUR SUBURB. It’s an homage to OUR TOWN (there have been many over the years, but never has there been one to conjoin the Chicago suburbs, serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Holocaust survivors, the Nazis threatened march through Skokie in 1977, amid all the hijinks and angst of senior year at Niles East — or is it New Trier West? — I’m forgetting). Anyway, with the playwright’s permission, I’ve given our Theater J student subscribers an insider peek at Darrah Could’s play, and we’ll be getting some feedback on the adaptation in comments here as well. It’s interesting to go from Ibsen’s AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE and examining the adapters’ strategies in the two different versions we’ve now read and experienced in BOGED (TRAITOR) and Arthur Miller’s version, and to now see how Darrah Cloud pays homage and also departs from the Wilder. Will be interesting to continue contemplating the value of such updating of timeless classics — choosing, as many a playwright has done before, to rewrite a masterpiece to make it speak in new ways to a new situation. Why, if a masterpiece is indeed “timeless,” does it make any sense to transplant and transpose and give new language and new character names and actions to already-durable prototypes? What’s the case to be made for a radical update like BOGED or SUBURB? And are the updates “radical” enough? What if a transposition is more subtle and gentle? I’ve had experience with that — see THE SEAGULL ON 16TH STREET! and click through a bunch of different links to see differing reactions to an adaptation that may not have gone far enough… or did it go too far?

Veronica Del Cerro and Alexander Strain as Nina and Treplev (photo by Stan Barouh)

Anyway, a salute to all the great artists at Ford’s who brought Wilder’s enduring masterpiece to life!

Relevant Reading

It’s Shirley.

A few things that are related to the 09/10 season and Theater J in general that I’ve been reading about today…

This didn’t exactly come from the internets, rather from the Dramaturgs and Literary Managers Listserve, for which I receive daily updates in my inbox. It’s managed by the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and it’s a fantastic resource for theater-makers everywhere. Imagine you have several hundred of your smartest, best-read, most research-savvy friends ready to help out withthe click of a “send button” and that’s the listserve.

A week ago a reader from NY posted this:
I’m prepping for an upcoming discussion of THE SEAGULL. And my mind started wandering as I thought about crazy production concepts for this beautiful play. I’m curious: what are some of the strangest ideas the rest of you have come across when working on the play or talking about it?

I thought about sending along the list of adaptations we’d generated for the program during SEAGULL ON 16TH STREET. But I wondered if they truly qualified as “strange” since most were pretty well known productions. Then a few days ago I was pleased to see that Theater J had indeed added something to the dialogue, courtesy of an audience member (perhaps a Theater J friend? Not a name that I know) who wrote:

This summer Theater J in D.C. performed an adaptation of “The Seagull” entitled “The Seagull on 16th Street,” modeled structurally along the lines of Louis Malle’s “Vanya on 42nd Street.” Theater J is in residence at the D.C. Jewish Community Center on 16th and Q, hence the title. The adaptation by A.D. Ari Roth is of relevance to this thread because it takes a substantial departure from the text in recasting Arkadina’s family, including the extended family of Polina, Masha, etc. as assimilated Jews. Konstantin, rejecting his mother’s distance from her roots, as well as the theater into which she has assimilated, is seeking a resurrection of his traditions and faith. His play in Act I is inspired by the traditional Friday night service of welcoming the Sabbath bride (Nina’s role), and the opening curtain is preceded by rituals such as lighting a Sabbath candle and the blowing of the shofar(normally associated withthe High Holidays rather than the Sabbath). Roth adds to Chekhov’s tensions between Konstantine andhis mother the issue of faith found and faith lost.

I found that Roth’s theme was most successful and resonant in the fourth act, specifically in Konstantin’s despair after seeing that Nina had found faith but that he had failed to do so. Just before he tears his manuscropts, Konstantin slowly and methodically takes from a shelf the symbols of his faith, the candlestick, the shofar, etc. and quietly places them in a box to be stored away and forgotten. In that gesture I felt a striking resonance between Chekhov’s text and Roth’s adaptation. It certainly was an unusual approach to the play, so I thought it worth mentioning in light of the current discussion.

Of course, we always love to be talked about (especially when it’s positive) and it’s nice to see we are making people think about theater and faith and other big ideas.

And a final SEAGULL tidbit–this note was also posted as a response by the wise and wonderful director/dramaturg/educator Rick Davis from George Mason University:

Guthrie production, late 80s early 90s? Lucian Pintilie directed. Last scene first.

Next, to continue my thought yesterday about the connections between RUINED and IN DARFUR, The Washington Post has a feature today about the Rape epidemic still raging in the Congo. We read a fair amount about systematic rape while researching the Bosnian War, as it was that conflict that brought the issue to international attention. While the motives seem somewhat less pointed in Africa than in the Balkans (where rape was a decidedly effective tool for ethnic cleansing) the results are no less devastating.

And finally, on a lighter note, check out this fantastic and illuminating interview with Itamar Moses–whose play THE FOUR OF US we’ll be producing next January (scroll down to August 6). The post is from the blog of another fantastic playwright, Adam Szymkowicz, who has dedicated the last several months of his blog to writing about up-and-coming playwrights. The posted chats are all really engaging–if you are at all interested in tracking the next generation of superstar theater writers, chances are you’ll find them on his blog. We’ve not had much contact with Itamar here in the office yet (except for Ari, who is addicted to the buzz of the facebook chat) but I will admit, I kind of love what he writes as advice to emerging playwrights, “Begin to treat rejection as totally neutral and anything shy of rejection as enormous encouragement”. I think it’s sound advice for anyone pursuing a career in the arts–be they writing, acting, directing or producing.

Dame Naomi “Redgrave” Jacobson Returns for Final SEAGULL Performances Today at 3 & 7:30!

Oh, what a splendid reunion it will be (gone 6 days & 3 shows, but how we missed her so?) and oh what a poignant farewell! We’ll get to feel it all today — Come early, stay late — It’s all Pay What You Wish — with a broad discussion on Treplev’s Mission, and Ours at 5:35 following the matinee performance. Today ends part one of our summer and brings to an official close the 2008-09 season. Let’s toast all we’ve wrought…

One Woman July Festival – Lise Bruneau Rocks!

What a great and timely article! Congratulations, Lise. And let’s hear it for DC Theatre Scene. What aren’t they on top of?

Nights Not For Granted

Thursday night was a small scale night of magic at the theater — nothing earthshaking, nothing record-breaking, history-making, award-taking; only full of life, full of fullness, right and light, with programming outside on the steps before the show, a warm full house during, and a well-attended talk-back with all 11 cast members on stage talking about the project, the process, mixing it up with the audience, thinking about faith and symbolism, character, and the great surprise of adding somebody new into the thick of a production. In this case Lise Bruneau has jumped in for 3 performances as Arkadina while our Dame Naomi Jacobson works with Lynn Redgrave and ten other Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship recipients at the Lunt-Fontanne Program Center at their Ten Chimneys estate in Wisconsin. Lise taking over for Naomi was the biggest deal put-in we’ve had during this run, which has included Cesar Guidamez stepping in for Jason McCool’s Yakov for a weekend, and Delia Taylor and Tom Howley stepping in for Nanna Ingvarsson and Brian Hemmingsen while they attended (and officiated at) a niece’s wedding. In each case, the understudy performance was seamlessly integrated into the whole of the production –I was so pleased to be able to see all these different iterations–but last night’s performance by Lise marked the biggest challenge, the highest degree of difficulty, and therefore the biggest of bravura performance of them all. Lise aced it and the cast, and audience, were enthralled. She’s with us for two mainstage productions in the new season and I look forward to her being a mainstay artist with us.

Rushing a bit here as I wish to at least record what’s already passed–which is the luster of a wonderful evening. We received wonderful feedback from the show — here’s one piece of email, from an industry insider:

“I’m glad I was able to get in to see the piece, even if it was just under the wire. I was glad to see Lise in the role – and I thought she was terrific. She’s such a wonderful actress!

Your acting company was terrific, and John Vreeke gave you a great production. I think the strength of the evening, though – and I’m not just blowing smoke up you’re a– — was the adaptation. I thought it was very faithful to Chekhov, while being very much of our time and world. I thought the language had a vitality to it that was quite musical and wonderful to listen to – very rich. And I enjoyed the passion behind the ideas. All-in-all, it was very impressive and a wonderfully mature piece of writing. Congratulations!”

So let’s hear it for warm insider chatter. But more to the point, the talk back after. Loved that cast unity–all of them/us up there–proud of our art and our process, connecting, discussing, savoring the company that we are for only 3 more performances. And yes, as I told the audience while waiting for the actors to emerge from their dressing rooms, and as was confirmed while watching perhaps the most moving rendition of Act IV I’d seen to date,

Teaching Chekhov To Recite The Havdalah (Reviews in The Jewish Press and The Sentinel)

From The Jewish Press (“America’s Largest Jewish Independent Weekly”)
July 15, 2009 – by Menachem Wecker
(click here to read article with accompanying show photographs)

In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a troupe of Athenian actors, “rude mechanicals” according to the sprite Puck, meets in the woods to rehearse “the most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby.” Puck frustrates the efforts of Quince, Snug, Flute, Snout, and Starveling to practice when he turns Bottom into a donkey. “If he come not, then the play is marred: it goes not forward, doth it?” worries Flute, but in the end the play-within-a-play transpires on schedule, with all its absurd disclaimers designed not to frighten the court ladies.

The play-within-a-play in The Seagull on 16th Street presents a monologue from the Sabbath Queen, responding to the question, “What will life be like for the Jewish people in 200,000 years?” Like the Pyramus and Thisby production, the vision of Judaism projected 200 millennia into the future elicits a barrage of taunts from the audience. But the playwright of the latter, Konstantin Treplev (Alexander Strain), is so troubled by the play’s reception that he calls for a premature curtain, truncating the theatrical flop intended to launch a new Jewish theater.

The Theater J production takes a lot of risks. That statement is worth repeating. Ari Roth, Theater J’s artistic director, has essentially taken a play by a non-Jew, Chekhov, which had no Jewish content whatsoever (the closest things to religion are references to “sacred art,” “high-priests of art,” and battles with Satan, according to the translation I found on Project Gutenberg) and infused it with Jewish content, themes, and songs from the American rock band R.E.M. Where Chekhov refers to “antediluvians,” Theater J amends, “people from before Noah’s ark,” and Chekhov’s stagehand Jacob becomes Yakov in Roth’s script. When Treplev’s mother, the famous actress Irina Arkadina (Naomi Jacobson), denounces his art as “decadent rubbish,” Theater J renders it “Hebraic tripe,” and later when Chekhov has Treplev call his mother a “Miser!” to which she retaliates with “Rag-bag!” Theater J offers the following exchange:

TREPLEV: Miser!
ARKADINA: Leach!
TREPLEV: Has-Been.
ARKADINA: Beggar! Jew! Nonentity!

Roth’s script also replaces the esoteric symbols in Treplev’s play with the Havdalah ceremony. All this Jewishness in Chekhov’s play has led to some reviewers, like Monica Shores of the influential blog DCist.com, to suggest that the play does not work with its new Jewish identity. Admitting that a Jewish Treplev is an “interesting idea,” Shores says the original play is so dense to begin with, that Theater J’s version “threatens to buckle under the weight of more conflict.” Indeed, Medvedenko (Mark Krawczyk) accuses Treplev in the play of “importing a Western European demographic and grafting it onto an Eastern European reality.”

I respectfully disagree. I think Chekhov reads quite well with Treplev announcing the play with a shofar, adding, “We’re beginning the way our ancient forefathers called their flock into battle. With our very own Call to Art! And Worship! To Introspection!” This is just the sort of thing one would expect of the young, tortured artist, who delights in translating the ritual for the benefit of those “who need their Hebrew rituals Anglicized:” “The Great Union/Division Synthesis.”

Treplev’s play receives the same criticisms that Theater J seems to be receiving, and it is worth noting that audiences ridiculed Chekhov’s original Seagull production. (to keep reading the review, click here)

* * *

from THE SENTINEL
Published on: Wednesday, July 08, 2009
By David Cannon, Sentinel Arts Critic

Poor Anton Chekhov. Chekhov became famous when top Russian directors staged his plays but the writer never totally liked the productions. You see, Chekov thought of his plays as comedies while directors kept turning them into intimate dramas. While hardly Neil Simon, Chekhov is also not the dreary realist that so many directors turn him into.

Finding the humor in Chekhov is one of the many things that make the current production of The Seagull down at Theater J so interesting. First of all, there is nothing particularly Jewish about the script and Theater J is better known for modern plays, not works from the end of the 19th century. This quite successful Seagull is something of a breakthrough for the group, while providing an interesting new lens on this familiar work. (click here to keep reading)

from Lloyd Rose on “The Seagull”

note: this entry has been updated by the guest author, Lloyd Rose, on July 16, 2009

During my decade as the theatre critic of The Washington Post, I spent a lot of time wondering, as I sat through yet one more, dove-grey, emotionally exquisite production of “The Cherry Orchard” or “The Three Sisters”, Why is there all this piety about Chekhov? Shakespeare has been subjected to (and survived) being transported to Bosnia or set in Elsinore Corporation. This may or may not be desirable, but at least no one tiptoes up to him as if everyone involved were in church. Chekhov flattens his admirers. They tend to act as if unworthy of his subtle artistry. His texts are sacred.

So I was pleased and heartened to see Ari Roth’s adaptation of “The Seagull” with its modest but moving introduction of religion into the soul-weary and soul-destroying world of Arkadina and her family, friends and servants. “Should” you take these famous characters and make them Jewish, something that is not only alien to the original play but alien to history itself, which relegated Russian Jewry to shetls and ghettos, not dachas? There’s no rule-book, and when, amazingly, yet another haunted layer is added to this vibrantly unhappy play, I consider the modification all to the good. It’s a bold move carried out here with the utmost respect, even delicacy, though the production itself is welcomely robust and funny and contains some of the freshest acting in a Chekhov play I’ve seen in years. Every role comes alive in surprising ways.

So much in Chekhov, you begin to think after numerous encounters, is impossible. That final scene of Nina’s, for example. I can’t recall how many talented young actresses I’ve watched come to fluttery grief repeating “I am a seagull” in wounded-Ophelia style. Veronica Del Cerro’s Nina is startlingly down-to-earth and strong; not a poetic waif but a woman punch-drunk from life’s beatings, as brain-damaged, in her way, as any fighter. The sense of loss is excruciating. Painful in another, slightly horrifying way, is Jerry Whiddon’s earnestly shallow Trigorin. The role is usually played with languid irony and ennui; Whiddon’s mediocre novelist is a bit desperate in his ordinariness, fighting hard to keep away from the realization he’s one of life’s third-raters (he seems to be hoping for at least second-place). And what better way to distract himself than with a pretty, worshipful young woman. . .

Poor Treplev tries not only to break into the future with his hopelessly bad avant-garde play, in this adaptation he is also trying, by reconnecting with Jewish mysticism and mythology, to reclaim the strength of the past. He’s doomed, of course–the people around him are happy in their thin, selfish lives, and the young people longing to explore all the depths of life drown trapped in these smug shallows. No past and faith and tradition, no future and art and hope, and, most horribly, not even a present. This production isn’t detached and compassionate and delicately shaded with melancholy; it’s strong enough to break your heart.

- Lloyd Rose

AROUND TOWN features “The Seagull on 16th” (transcribed now as well!)

It’s apparently been on the air for a while already but only made it onto the W.E.T.A. website last night. Here’s a fantastic piece on our production with three of the Around Town regulars offering their reactions — with wonderful footage from the show. Anyone wanna post the pull-quotes?

Click here to get directly to the Around Town segment.

WETA Around Town

Around Town [Transcript] The Seagull on 16th Street

Robert Aubrey Davis: Hello I’m Robert Aubrey Davis and I’m joined by Jane Horwitz and Trey Graham. Theater J journeys to the Russian Countryside with their adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s classic tale about spiritual yearning and artistic ambition. The Seagull on 16th Street brings together a recognizable cast of local actors, sprinkles in snippets of popular music and pokes fun at lofty dreams and desires in this story about love lost, the making of art, a mother son relationship and a little touch of Judaism. The theater they’re trying to create in the countryside is basically a Jewish themed theater instead of a surrealist or modernist theater, and I thought that worked fine for me.

Jane Horwitz: I was surprised at how well it worked. Theater J is a Jewish themed theater company and they wanted to try…and there’s a little homage to Vanya on 42nd Street, the Louis Malle film. But they wanted to try making some of the characters Jewish and part of the mother-son conflict is that she’s an assimilated Jew who’s a very popular actress in Russia at the turn of the century and he wants to get more in touch with his identity, his ethnic identity and his religious identity, and they disagree about that. But it’s not laid on to thick. It’s rather lightly done.

Trey Graham: It’s not. I though it was rather gracefully done, this adaptation. It does come off in some ways I think as a sort of apologia for the theater’s message.

Jane Horwitz: Isn’t there even a line about who would want to do a Jewish theater or something.

Trey Graham: But in that way I think it works, especially if it’s speaking to its own audience and to some of the non Jewish patrons of Theater J.

Robert Aubrey Davis: But also I think you know the way you can tell a great Seagull is if you have this weight of the Russian soul and you felt this. I thought Naomi Jacobson did a brilliant job.

Jane Horwitz: Extremely well cast and acted.

Trey Graham: There are some tremendous performances here. Naomi Jacobson, J. Fred Shiffman as the doctor in a very controlled, contained performance.

Robert Aubrey Davis: Yes.

Jane Horwitz: Alexander Strain as the son, I loved very much.

Robert Aubrey Davis: Yep, fantastic.

Trey Graham: Absolutely. And the Masha, interesting, not quite the broody, sad Masha, at least not in the beginning, that you expect.  

Robert Aubrey Davis: Yeah, she’s kind of bright. I thought it was a fascinating production, a fascinating performance.

Jane Horwitz: Some of the best local actors we’ve got and they’re all gathered in this one little place. It’s really quite a pleasure to watch.

Robert Aubrey Davis: It’s called The Seagull on 16th Street at Theater J until July 19. Thanks so much for joining us.

New Forms or Nothing?

Shirley here. 

We gathered this Sunday, July 12 for our penultimate “Artistic Director’s Roundtable Discussion”, titled: “New Forms”: Adapting the Classics. The title of the talk came from a well-known line of Treplev’s from THE SEAGULL: “We need new forms of expression. We need new forms, and if we can’t have them we had better have nothing.” Of course in our version the line, and that specific cry for a more avant-garde theater, has changed to meet the circumstances of the world we’ve created. Which seemed a perfect launching point for this discussion…

Joining us on the panel were:
• Joe Banno, Former Artistic Director of Source Theater, Freelance Director
• Jacqueline Lawton, playwright and dramaturg
• Jason Loewith, playwright and adapter, Executive Director of the National New Play Network
and
• Ari Roth, Artistic Director of Theater J, adapter of THE SEAGULL ON 16TH STREET

First though–two quick definitions of “adaptation”:
Literary Adaptation: Literary adaptation is the adapting of a literary source (e.g., a novel, short story, poem) to another genre or medium, such as a film, a stage play, or even a video game. It can also involve adapting the same literary work in the same genre or medium, just for different purposes, e.g., to work with a smaller cast, in a smaller venue (or on the road), or for a different demographic group.

Adaptation: The process whereby an organism becomes better suited to its habitat. Also, the term adaptation may refer to a characteristic which is especially important for an organism’s survival.

The second one–the biological definition–interested me. What happens if we substitute the word “play” for the word “organism”?

But back to the panel. With introductions out of the way we started with the question, “What about a piece of original source material inspires a writer to want to adapt it?”

Appreciative Feedback from Thursday Night

Over 110 folks in the house last night and, while some were friends or free tix, others were brand new to the theater and what was so important about that was the chance to introduce ourselves to a whole new audience that found itself entranced by the production, with many staying for a fascinating presentation on the challenge of translating Chekov with Elena Lozinsky, moderated by our production dramaturg, Jodi Kanter.

I post two very affirming comments here. These are the kinds of responses that let us know that the production is making a strong case for itself. And that our wonderful actors are sharing the drama with the audience in a very available way.

The first comment comes from Manny Strauss, co-founder of Washington Theatre Review:

Just a quick note as I am much busier at the office than I would like to be in July. I feel this morning like your production of The Seagull was theater’s version of laser vision correction for me. Your adaptation hit me in ways no production of a Chekhov piece ever has. I don’t think it was the specific Jewish overlay as much as what you mentioned in the post-show discussion. It was the “dialogue” and the many ways in which you made the characters seem real and contemporary as opposed to the stiff figures typically portrayed in Chekhov. I was so emotionally and intellectually invested last evening, a response I didn’t expect. Any interest in leading me closer to Ibsen? Bravo!”

* * *

Next comes from our blogging friend Arthur Hessel, and his excellent site “Arthur Thinks“

Don’t Avoid Chekhov – The Seagull at 16th Street at Theater J
July 10, 2009
Filed under: thinkingarthur @ 9:28 am

“I think there may be some of us for whom a Chekhov play is not very enticing. We think that they are boring, and dated, and formless, and filled with confusing Russian characters with too many polysyllabic names.

This is a false assumption. Chekhov’s plays have been continually performed for 100 years precisely because they are beautifully structured, universal in theme, contain just the right mix of drama and humor, and are highly enjoyable.

This is the case with the unique adaptation of The Seagull, called The Seagull on 16th Street, playing at Theater J now through July 19. We saw it last night.

The Seagull is set in turn of the (last) century Russia, at a country estate far from Moscow. A place where visitors wish they could stay forever, and those that live there want to take the next train out. It is a play about theater. The two central characters are mother and son. The mother is a star of the Moscow stage, playing all the grand roles. Her son, stuck at the estate, wishes to break free of his mother’s influence, and create a different, more modern form of theater. The mother, jealous of her son (and of every young woman of theatrical amibition), frustrates, berates and insults him at every turn. The other main characters (the young woman who lives on the neighboring estate, the famous author on whom the famous actress dotes, the aging brother of the actress who lives at the estate, the doctor on whom everyone has always lavished attention, the overbearing manager of the estate) all play their roles in this comedic drama of universal emotional interest.

At Theater J, artistic director Ari Roth, working with translator Carol Rocamora, has made several changes to the play. Notably he made Arkadina (the mother) and Treplev (the son) Jewish, and Treplev’s attempt at creating a new form of theater is not an attempt to create early 20th century Russian avant garde theater, but rather a new form of Jewish theater.

What can one say about this unusual adaptation? I would suggest that one can say that it neither adds to the original Chekhov, nor detracts from it. And, further, that saying this makes for a very positive statement. For who would have thought that you could change the cultural background and religion of the two main characters of The Seagull, and not wind up with something a little hokey? But this production is not in the least hokey; it is a very strong production of The Seagull, a play which in any event gives one a lot to think about, with an added dimension, an added element of interest. What does it mean to live this “meaningless” existence in rural Russia, with the world passing you by, where the most realistic thing you can think about is escaping to the theater, when, among everything else, you are Jewish? Do you try to escape the Judaism, as Arkadina does, or embrace it, as Treplev attempts?

To keep reading, click here