On Stage
The Seagull on 16th Street
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Washington Post
The Nest of Times: Making 'Seagull' Fly Anew
By Celia Wren
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, June 21, 2009
"When I write a play I feel uncomfortable, as if somebody is poking me in the neck," Anton Chekhov once confessed. Theater J Artistic Director Ari Roth and his colleagues, too, have suffered twinges -- philosophical ones -- while crafting "The Seagull on 16th Street," a risky, shofar-and-R.E.M.-inflected spin on Chekhov's 1896 classic.
"I found myself, with my staff, talking -- and sometimes arguing -- about, 'Can we do this play? Should we do this play? Are we allowed to do this play?' " Roth recalled last month, in an interview in his tiny 16th Street office.
His team resolved that particular bout of soul-searching, which reflected a seeming disconnect between Theater J's mandate -- to explore the Jewish cultural heritage -- and Chekhov's oeuvre. The upshot is the show that officially opens tonight, under John Vreeke's direction. Adapted by Roth, "Seagull on 16th" veers from Chekhov's script, with tweaked lines, new scenes and re-imagined character identities.
The young writer Treplev (Alexander Strain) is now a would-be founder of a Jewish theater troupe, bent on birthing art that speaks of God. The play he stages in Act 1 (as Chekhov conceived it, a sendup of symbolism) now alludes to the Havdalah ceremony, which recognizes the end of the Jewish Sabbath. Treplev's mother, the famous actress Arkadina (Naomi Jacobson) mocks her son's efforts to turn drama into "a synagogue." And the pessimistic Masha (Tessa Klein), while still uttering her memorable quip "I'm in mourning for my life," also says things like "You're such a goy."
Echoes of Pirandello sound occasionally, hinting that the characters know they're 21st-century actors. Still, the bulk of Chekhov's text remains, as does an ostensible 1890s Russian setting. The original play's wryly wistful plot still peregrinates to the same aching conclusion.
"There's a constant interplay between the present context and the past text that is a good way, we feel -- I feel -- of making Chekhov come alive," Roth says.
This artistic tightrope act tiptoed forward after Roth -- in London in 2007, with a Theater J group -- caught the Royal Court Theatre's "Seagull," directed by Ian Rickson. The production, which starred Kristin Scott Thomas (and later jaunted to Broadway), marked Rickson's exit from the post of Royal Court artistic director. Bowled over by the piece, Roth began to think of "Seagull" -- with its stage-dazzled characters -- as a potential rite of passage in a theater's life.
And a Chekhov staging by Theater J would be a rite of passage -- because the company, known for mounting new plays, had never really dallied with vintage canonical works, unless you count the opus of Clifford Odets. "We've never gone back into the earlier century," Roth notes. (In 2000, the theater did co-produce, with the Stanislavsky Theater Studio, Neil Simon's "The Good Doctor," based on Chekhov stories.)
He thought it might be time to break that pattern. "A theater that's devoted exclusively to new work can exhaust itself without the replenishment of those fundamental vitamins that come when you come into contact with the classics," he says.
With the iconoclastic notion came the pushback: Chekhov was not Jewish, and "Seagull" contains no explicitly Jewish themes. So, in Roth's words, "What the hell were we doing Chekhov for?" That query unleashed further soul-searching: "How Jewish a theater was Theater J?"
The debate yielded the concept of infusing "Seagull" with Theater J's perspective. Fortunately, Roth knew a Chekhov translator who was willing to let him do some freehanded tinkering. Carol Rocamora, who has translated all of Chekhov's dramatic works, is also a director whose credits including founding a Philadelphia theater specializing in new plays. "I know the adaptation process," she says calmly, pointing out that Chekhov's writing is frequently subject to overhaul, by culprits ranging from Tennessee Williams ("The Notebook of Trigorin," a "Seagull" variation) to New York's avant-garde the Wooster Group ("Brace Up!," a multimedia deconstruction of "The Three Sisters").
Indeed, on some level, Rocamora sees Theater J's "Seagull" riff as extending the play's intrinsic motifs. "It's not a Jewish 'Seagull' as much as a play about faith -- faith in one's ability as an artist, faith in the theater, which is Chekhov's original intent. And then, Ari has added onto that, faith in Judaism."
At the same time, she thinks the "comedy" -- as Chekhov labeled "Seagull" -- can accommodate any humor that arises from Theater J's gentle spoofing of its own vision.
"Chekhov was born with a comedic soul," she says, adding that, had the writer not contracted tuberculosis as a young man (he died of the disease at age 44), "he would have been the Neil Simon of Russia."
(Chekhov the tragicomedian might have smiled ruefully at the dramatic pedigree of a prop seagull in Theater J's new offering. It's Jonathan, the preserved herring gull who's frequently loaned out for "Seagull" productions by the Division of Birds at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. The Smithsonian researchers who maintain a meticulous file on the bird's stage appearances also do forensic research on bird-plane collisions.)
With Rocamora's green light, Roth composed his "Seagull on 16th," drawing inspiration from Louis Malle's 1994 film "Vanya on 42nd Street," a portrait of contemporary thespians rehearsing David Mamet's version of "Uncle Vanya." To draw 16th Street into "Seagull," as Malle's film imported Times Square into "Vanya," Roth has some of his characters quote modern pop tunes, including R.E.M. (Pace D.C. classical music buffs: Dmitri Shostakovich's scores also figure in the show.)
Balancing a 21st-century Jewish-theater-in-Washington perspective with one from czarist Russia can be tricky. "It's kind of been interesting to see how these two worlds mesh and meld," Jacobson says. "It's not always an easy transitioning."
For instance, when she plays an assimilated Arkadina flinging the word "Jew!" at Treplev as an epithet (not an original Chekhov line), she says, "it has to be a meld of Ari, Chekhov, Arkadina and me. It's got to ring true for all four of us." Such moments "are challenging," she admits, "but not without merit."
Roth says Theater J is embracing such challenges now because, in an era when the mainstream seems to be trending more diverse, "the culturally specific theater movement is asking more existential questions than ever."
Existential questions are hard to answer. In the meantime, "Seagull on 16th" is a round in what Roth calls "a continuing struggle to -- I wouldn't say fight with the mission. I'd just say, to make sure it's elastic."
From former Washington Post Chief Critic Lloyd Rose
"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 i n 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. "
Lloyd Rose
AROUND TOWN on WETA Discussion
Washington City Paper
Reviewed: The Seagull on 16th Street Chekhov brings the funny at Theater J.
By Glen Weldon
Posted: June 24, 2009
Aplomb de Famille: Theater J stages Chekhov domesticity at its most lively.
As much as the name Anton Chekhov conjures images of bored, po-faced Russians dithering over samovars and parting the air with long, wet sighs, the guy knew how to do funny, and 2009 is giving D.C. audiences a couple chances to see it. In January, the Washington Shakespeare Company mounted a downright slapstick Cherry Orchard with intriguing, if mixed, results. Now Chekhov’s Seagull—the consumptive Cossack’s first and most meticulous examination of despair and distraction among the Russian gentry—is getting fed through the comedy filter at Theater J. What emerges under the confident direction of John Vreeke (who helmed Forum’s much-loved Last Days of Judas Iscariot last year) is crisp, funny, and ably performed. It’s also inflected with an extra shtikl of comic energy by artistic director Ari Roth’s adaptation. Inspired by Louis Malle’s film Vanya on 42nd Street, Roth’s script has fun blurring the lines between actor and role, production and play, contemporary culture and 1898 Russia. The play’s famous opening exchange—in which the lovesick Masha (Tessa Klein) explains that she wears black because “I am in mourning for my life”—remains intact, but the performers sidle up to it gradually, and Masha’s black-lace-and-leather wardrobe is more Dead Can Dance than dacha. (Roth’s attempt to overlay the play with Jewish themes is less successful, because such affinities can’t simply be asserted if they’re to carry real weight. To work as Roth intends, they’d need to be woven even more thoroughly into the warp and woof of the text than they have been here.) The parallels that do work, and work well, are visual and emotional: Note how similarly both Naomi Jacobsen’s Arkadina and Alexander Strain’s Treplev evince their soaring neediness—Vreeke has mother and son literally cling to their respective paramours, choking them like creeper vines. Jacobsen and Strain fill out only two slots in what’s pretty much a Justice League roll call of D.C. performers: Jerry Whiddon’s rumpled Trigorin; J. Fred Shiffman’s effortlessly empathetic Doctor Dorn; a compassionate Nanna Ingvarsson; a commanding Brian Hemmingsen. Nina (Veronica del Cerro), the provincial girl who gets caught up and nearly destroyed by the play’s events, never emerges clearly here: Del Cerro’s fine in the early going, when Nina is filled with hope and desperate dreams. But when the character appears at the end of the play, she has been overmatchedus t by life—she is fragile, shattered, an exposed nerve. Del Cerro instead comes across as mildly diffuse and distracted; as a result, the play’s famous climax, which should feel inevitable, can’t arrive with the requisite force. Even so, this Seagull is lively, solidly built and frequently funny—and productions of Chekhov that achieve that particular trifecta are rare indeed.
Metro Weekly
Russian Jewry
Theater J's Ari Roth has ever-so-slightly tweaked Chekhov's 'The Seagull' to make it explicitly, inherently Jewish
by Doug Rule
Published on July 2, 2009
Oy vey! The Yiddish construction is fun to use and say in English, even though it expresses dismay or exasperation. Yet, just the sound of it adds some levity to the moment.
Similarly, celebrated Russian playwright Anton Chekhov wrote plays intended to straddle the divide between the tragic and the comic -- working to draw the funny out of the sad.
And to think he wasn't Jewish.
Take The Seagull. Chekhov's century-old comedy does not feature any Jewish characters or themes, and yet it is characterized by utter oy vey¬-edness: replete with angst, existential fervor, romantic pining. The mother-son relationship at the heart of the play is so Oedipal, it could pass for a Jewish stereotype.
And now, in Theater J's adaptation, it does. To adhere to the theater's mission to explore Jewish cultural heritage, Theater J's artistic director Ari Roth ever-so-slightly tweaks the play to make it explicitly, inherently Jewish. More than just create their own shtick, they have created a noteworthy, modernized retelling of this classic tale about youthful yearning and unrequited love. With director John Vreeke and translator Carol Rocamora, Roth mostly sticks to the play's original 19th century Russian countryside setting, but he incorporates Russian Jews and modern Jewish sensibilities into the mix. The Seagull on 16th Street explores eternal questions about spiritually and symbolism that everyone can toast.
Even without its novel adaptation, Seagull would be a must-see thanks to its altogether winning ensemble cast, led by Naomi Jacobson as Arkadina, a famous Russian actress perpetually anguished about her advancing age as well as her son Treplev (Alexander Strain), an aspiring writer who has yet to make a name for himself. Perhaps in part because he's never felt appreciated by his mother, Treplev rejects her secular approach to success, in which her Jewish identity is downplayed and her religion itself nonexistent. Treplev announces formation of his own Jewish theater company, and stages a production of his first play at the country estate of his Uncle Sorin (Stephen Patrick Martin) for a gathering of friends and family, most of whom are sycophants to his mother and his mother's boyfriend, Trigorin (Jerry Whiddon), a Russian literary giant. They effectively laugh Treplev's play right off the stage, causing Treplev much soul-searching about his future.
Meanwhile, Treplev's girlfriend Nina (Veronica del Cerro), an aspiring actress, sees star-making potential in Trigorin, and proceeds to naively throw herself at his mercy. The nefarious Trigorin is flattered by her youthful adoration, exploiting it for his own gain.
This adaptation effortlessly incorporates a cappella snippets from modern-day pop songs, especially anguished laments from R.E.M., sung by Jason McCool as Yakov. The rustic staging, by designer Misha Kachman, as well as the howling wind that blows in from an offstage lake during the show's final act, only adds to the drama. Everything is designed to enhance the play's central message of love, longing and the lure of youth.
The play gets off to a slow start, and it drags ever-so-slightly in its third of four acts. But the resolutely strong cast keeps your attention throughout, teasing out the comedy from all the tragedy. Tessa Klein as Masha fires off several quips, from the new (for this production) ''You're such a goy'' to the classic ''I'm in mourning for my life,'' her famous explanation as to why she wears only black. J. Fred Shiffman, as the confident and successful Dr. Dorn, tosses out his fair share of wit and wisdoms and nearly steals the show with a masterful performance.
But the real showstopper is relative newcomer del Cerro as Nina. Del Cerro makes the role, famously played decades ago by Vanessa Redgrave and earlier this decade by Natalie Portman, her own. She's even more radiant than the script demands. As the show's symbolic seagull, she soars.
The Sentinel
The Seagull explores artistic dreams and generational conflicts
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.
The full name of the Theater J production is “The Seagull on 16th Street,” a nod toward another Chekhov adaptation, the film Vanya on 42nd Street. Artistic director Ari Roth has adapted this play for this company and has carefully added Jewish themes to Carol Rocamora’s translation. Some of this is purely cosmetic – an outfit here or the insertion of a Yiddish term there (the “L’chaim” toast).
Other changes are more radical. The silly play within a play that Konstantin writes and Nina performs in the first scene has become an early prototype for Jewish Theater. Along with the typical generation gap issues that separate Konstantin and his successful mother, there is the added conflict of fiercely proud Jewish son versus a far more urban and assimilated Jewish mother.
Not all of Roth’s changes and additions work, like some of the more modern musical selections. Rest assured that 90 percent of this play is still The Seagull, a work that explores artistic dreams and generational conflict in more depth than any of Chekhov’s other plays. At the heart of the play is the love triangle between young but immature budding writer Konstantin, who is in love with aspiring actress Nina, who has a crush on older, more established writer Trigorin.
In typical Chekhov fashion, a number of subplots carry the play forward. Director John Vreeke remembered that Chekhov called his plays comedies, and a lot of the early scenes are quite humorous. The fine acting helps bring this off. Naomi Jacobson is wonderfully vain but well meaning as Konstantin’s mother, while Alexander Strain has a field day as the immature Konstantin. Former Round House artistic director Jerry Whiddon brings an interesting twist to Trigorin – rather ordinary and even a little seedy – while Veronica del Cerro successfully shows us a Nina that matures over the course of the play.
Again not everything works but the heart of this Seagull is still what Chekhov wrote and this fine cast proves very adept at Chekhov. After all, while this playwright did not say that the characters is “The Seagull” were Jewish, he did not go out of his way to say they definitely were not Jewish either.
3 stars
Potomac Stages
Ari Roth's Unique adaptation for those immersed in Chekhov’s world of self-indulgent beings
Running time 2:20 – one intermission
Reviewed June 27 by David Siegel
This is an appealing work for those immersed in the esteemed Anton Chekhov’s oeuvre and who want to see a contemporary world premiere adaptation with a rather unique twist. This is no half-hearted variation of costume changes and frothy accents. This The Seagull is a gutsy, distinctive turn that brings forth issues of faith that Ari Roth found present in Chekhov’s century old original. In his adaptation, Roth superimposes matters regarding the Jewish faith and the struggles of prominent characters to either reconnect with their former religion or continue on their path to assimilation and integration into society. This newly-minted theme is overlaid on Chekhov’s bracing work regarding artistic creativity as well as the consequences of mismatches of love. Does the adaptation work? More so for Chekhov aficionados who want to size up an interloper’s efforts. The needy diva and verbally bullying mother is played with a flip of the hand by Naomi Jacobson. She lives for the external validation of audience applause. Alexander Strain, her extremely sensitive and psychologically unmoored playwright son is inevitably outwitted or outmaneuvered and not just by Jacobson. Surrounding them are assorted others, each with an emotionally unstable life story that captures the essence of people who have little to keep themselves vibrant unless “an other” is present to shine a light or provide warm hugs. The underlying original, The Seagull (1896), still connects with its dark humor; a son crushed, feckless males hurting impressionable young women and languid, dreamy people grappling with their needy natures. This is ultimately a heady rendering of drama kings and queens living self-indulgent lives.
Storyline: Youth is envied, challenged and mortally wounded in this tale of lovelorn artists, civil servants and household workers. In a new adaptation of Chekhov's play, there is a contemporary portal though which the production journeys back in time to the Russian countryside revealing the clash between mother and son affecting others.
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) was a pre-eminent Russian playwright and a major short-story writer. He produced four theater classics including Uncle Vanya (1897), Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904) as well as The Seagull. We will never know what Chekhov would think of this adaptation, but he did give a nod with Seagull lines such as “we need new forms of expression” matched with “in all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.” Rather than reflecting upon the oft-revived playwright Chekhov, your reviewer notes that adapter Roth wrote in length regarding Theater J’s “first foray into fully producing classical work” and the liberties taken to connect with the Theatre J mission to “celebrate the distinctive urban voice and social vision that are part of the Jewish cultural legacy.” John Vreeke’s direction is crisp with a speedy sense of time even with a stage clock in the audience’s view stuck at 8 PM. He has blocked this work so that the stage is filled not just with objects but with life. The cast glides and slides, working with their upper bodies, projecting their inner commotions with a tad of a knowing grin. A curtain shimmies as if wind is blowing, a shimmering lake is projected at the rear of the set and later even a visibly dead stuffed bird appears.
Naomi Jacobson’s manipulative, self-absorbed Arkadina is the centerpiece; she willfully pulls focus away from anyone who dares take her spotlight. She is a bundle of waving dismissive arms, showering trivializing glances at Alexander Strain’s attempts to live his own dream even as he surrenders to her seemingly innocent hugs. Yet she does not seem to fill the stage or suck out the air with her presence. Strain is artsy sensitive with his struggling soul visible, finally gaining control with one final act of off-set uncoupling from Jacobson after a showy bit of frustration when he has the stage to himself. It is his journey into forgotten Jewish roots that is the crux of the Roth adaptation that is met with disdain and derision as his character evolves. J. Fred Shiffman is the generally cheerful doctor who has lived a full life and still can turn heads. He has the most realized sense of decency toward others though he projects an almost disengaged manner. Veronica del Cerro is the spirited, innocent who describes herself as a seagull, wanting freedom to do as she desires. She is undone by her ga-ga reactions to the celebrities she meets leading to her loss of youthful spotlessness … beaten down by the stronger and less caring. Jerry Whiddon is the dreamy playwright who is an object of desire by women who find his frailness and words appealing. Tessa Klein is a brooding Masha; weary and self-pitying living her life in mourning even before mourning is required. Brian Hemmingsen and Nanna Ingvarsson add working class bite.
The Theatre J stage is decked out in weathered grey lumber given a sense of the sun bleached outdoors. Chairs, desks and a small cupboard are moved about to give a sense of time and seasonal changes; the lighting design producing the cold feel of an autumn storm. Costumes are not so much of a period, but of a class; no tattered clothes, but of the natty bourgeoisie and arty set impeccably dressed. Even those of lesser classes are not unkempt. Snippets of love songs from the 1950’s onward are sung by several actors to push feelings of unrequited love to the fore.
Adapted by Ari Roth from the play by Anton Chekhov. Translation by Carol Rocamora. Directed by John Vreeke. Design: Misha Kachman (set and costumes) Dan Covey (lights) Matt Nielson (sound) Stan Barouh (photography) Kate Kilbane (stage manager). Cast: Veronica del Cerro, Cesar A. Guadamuz, Brian Hemmingsen, Nanna Ingvarsson, Naomi Jacobson, Tessa Klein, Mark Krawczyk, Stephen Patrick Martin, Jason McCool, J. Fred Shiffman, Alexander Strain, Jerry Whiddon.
The DCIST
The Seagull On 16th Street: One Theme Too Many
Written by DCist contributor Monica Shores
It seems that Theater J’s artistic director Ari Roth, who adapted Chekov's classic The Seagull for the company, knows his decision to infuse the play with a Jewish crisis of faith may be a hard sell. Much of the printed program of The Seagull On 16th Street is devoted to justifying this choice, which stemmed from a need to square the play’s solidly non-Jewish content with a theater company whose mission is to explore “Jewish cultural legacy.” His logic is that The Seagull already touches on issues of faith (whether it be in the value of one’s artistic work, talent, or identity), so there's no harm in throwing religious faith onto the pile.
It’s an interesting idea, but The Seagull is so dense a play in its original form, relentlessly exploring the unfulfilled desires of each character — primarily unrequited love — that the production threatens to buckle under the weight of more conflict.
The burdened Treplev (Alexander Strain) must struggle with his art, his selfish mother, his love for the neighbor, Nina, and now his Jewish identity. Perhaps it’s no wonder that Strain delivers such a hysterical performance, shoveling his lines at other characters and the audience as though he can’t unload them quickly enough, trembling and wheeling about the stage. Strain was last seen at Theater J as the “Tortured Genius” in The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall and similar inflections stray into his part here, namely a certain pomposity that makes it difficult to sympathize with his perpetual fragility.
As his mother, Arkadina, Naomi Jacobson is a lively and delightfully funny stage diva, so adept at manipulating others with her charisma that it seems to require no effort. Her companion, Trigorin (Jerry Whiddon) is likable as a novelist laboring in critical mediocrity while obtaining success among the masses, and so guileless in his dealings with Treplev’s love, Nina (Veronica del Cerro), that the later revelation that he's a callous scoundrel hardly seems plausible. Whiddon’s scenes with del Cerro are dominated by genuine sweetness and mutual curiosity, but there is not a spark of sexual chemistry between these two. By the end of Act Two, Trigorin seems poised to adopt Nina rather than to ruin her. J. Fred Shiffman as Dorn, the much-lusted after obstetrician, and Stephen Patrick Martin as Sorin, Arkadina’s good-natured brother, deliver quietly pitch-perfect performances, anchoring the wild energy of Nina, Treplev, and Arkadina.
Many liberties are taken with the script and staging (the characters dress primarily in white and khaki, like lounging Southerners, with the men in loose suits and Arkadina in fitted skirts and blouses), and the anachronisms are not cohesive. Characters sing lyrics from R.E.M. and Joni Mitchell songs, yet Nina is left to deliver lines about "driving the horses” while wearing Keds and a chunky star necklace. If Chekhov would be comfortable with his original characters chanting in Hebrew and arguing about the Sabbath, he probably wouldn’t begrudge their using a car.
Washington Jewish Weekly
Making Chekhov Jewish
by Lisa Traiger , Arts Correspondent
The beauty embedded in the work of early modernist Russian playwright Anton Chekhov rests in its elasticity. There are the period plays, set in Moscow country dachas, the articulate women corseted, the men dapper and talkative in bowlers and suspenders. But Chekhov was, and remains, more than a century after his early death at age 44, a man for all seasons and, so it seems, all eras. Chekhov, of course, was not a Jew, but as a member of the Russian intelligentsia living at the end of the 19th century, he was familiar with Jews. For a short while, Chekhov was even engaged to a Jewish woman. But his plays are not intrinsically Jewish.
Or are they?
That was the question that tantalized playwright/artistic director Ari Roth into his latest project at Theater J: The Seagull on 16th Street, a world-premiere revisioning of Chekhov's beloved early play The Seagull, known as much for its linguistic muscularity as for its sprawling cast of disaffected malcontents and unrequited lovers.
As Roth rethinks the Russian character and reframes Chekhov's cast as Jews, he keeps Chekhov's sturdy bones and rewrites his upper-middle-class Russians as secularized fin de siecle Jews and their contemporaries. The result is a production that revitalizes and freshens some tried-and-true Chekhovian arguments by sifting them through a Jewish strainer.
Playwright Roth's rejigging of the script, translated by Carol Rocamora, is helped along immensely by director John Vreeke, who understands that while Chekhov deliberately labeled this work a comedy, tragedy is never distant. For Roth, that essential motif is as Jewish as it is Russian, and ultimately it's what makes Seagull on 16th more than a curiosity.
The plot, as it is, revolves around the dysfunctional mother-son relationship between aging actress Arkadina (an exquisitely self-centered Naomi Jacobson) and her son, budding writer Treplev (an achingly tortured artist, Alexander Strain). The expansive cast of 11 constellates around this dueling pair. There's also Nina (Veronica del Cerro), a budding actress whose love for Treplev fades on meeting popular writer Trigorin (an understated Jerry Whiddon). And Masha (Tessa Klein), the brooding daughter of brusque estate manager Shemraev (Brian Hemmingsen) whose love for Treplev is unrequited. Arkadina's brother, Sorin (Stephen Patrick Martin), mourns for a life lived blandly. As Dorn, the family physician and one-time man-about-town, a steadfast J. Fred Shiffman seems the sanest of the bunch.
Treplev was Chekhov's mouthpiece in an early monologue, urging new forms and styles for a theater world then gone stale with heart-tugging melodramas. This new Treplev in his Jewish guise seems a Roth alter ego: His rumpled jacket, untucked shirt and his assertions about making the theater a place where spirit and community can be drawn together echo Roth's own sentiments for his version of a 21st-century urban Jewish theater.
We meet Treplev as he's putting the finishing touches on his play, a modernist rendition of the Havdalah ceremony, his white-clad Nina aglow portraying the departing Sabbath Queen. "Theater is more than stardust and time travel," he declares to his less-than-attentive onstage audience, "[it] must wake us up to our fellow man, our country, our god." Sounds like a Theater J mission statement.
Fast-talking Treplev is nearly beside himself, his creativity flowing, when Arkadina stops him in his tracks, denigrating his work and his nascent interest in Judaism. This generational divide, representing children reawakening an interest in religion that their parents or grandparents put aside, rings as true in the 19th century as it does in the 21st.
Not until Acts Three and Four does the play progress comfortably rather than fitfully. As the various couplings and uncouplings, lovers sought and rejected, play out, Seagull on 16th seems ready to alight, and yet, alas, it never soars.
So for all Roth's self-regard, his questioning on the Jewishness of the Russian soul and spirit, this Chekhov remains what it always was. Has Roth revisioned Chekhov's Russian creations as a Jewish family? Modestly so. Was the task worth the effort? Perhaps.
Or as Tolstoy, another great Russian (non-Jewish) writer noted in beginning Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Chekhov's family of characters, whether Jewish or not, is as singularly unhappy.
We Love DC Blog
We Love Arts: The Seagull on 16th Street
By Jenn Larsen, 1:00 pm June 23rd, 2009
Most people don’t associate Chekhov with comedy. We think Russia in all caps, passion with a punch, alcoholics, suicides, depressives. And yes, there’s a lot of that. Except it can all be pretty hysterical stuff, as Theater J’s adaptation of “The Seagull” proves. It’s a thin line between tragedy and comedy, and Chekhov certainly meant us to see the absurdity in our own hyperbolic neuroses. Or put more simply - when a guy presents a dead seagull to his girlfriend, it’s ok to laugh.
Theater J’s mandate is to explore the Jewish cultural heritage and they usually tackle bold new plays. To pull Chekhov into this mandate involved a new translation by Carol Rocamora and an adaptation by Artistic Director Ari Roth that weaves in Jewish cultural references, mostly at the top of the play. If you aren’t familiar with “The Seagull,” these changes will barely register. If you are, they are easily accepted, unless you’re a hardcore Chekhovian scholar. And so we have “The Seagull on 16th Street,” a reference to 16th Street’s Jewish history and a nod to “Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street.”
The core of “The Seagull” is the idea of faith - in oneself, in one’s work and talent - and the terrible capacity to do both good and evil, on a whim. Director John Vreeke delicately pulls this out in a production that makes an excellent introduction to Chekhov. And an ensemble cast of Washingtonian theater regulars is admirably up to the task.
Henpecked by his adoring yet suffocating actress mother, Konstantin is perpetually frustrated in his quest to make art of his own. Misunderstood by all around him, including his vibrant yet vapid girlfriend Nina, his increasingly self-destructive and self-important mania is made palpable by Alexander Strain. Strain really toes the line between tragedy and comedy here in a risky performance matched by that of Naomi Jacobson as his mother. A gifted actress, Arkadina is a complicated person hiding under a shallow and selfish veil. It’s a dream role that Jacobson attacks beautifully.
As her lover Trigorin, Jerry Whiddon chillingly evokes the personality of a writer who only wants what he can use for the page. And my favorite performance was that of the country doctor Dorn, played with a haunting ennui by J. Fred Shiffman. I’ve always wondered if we’re supposed to imagine perhaps that he is Konstantin’s actual father, and I saw little hints of that possibility here, with Jacobson and Shiffman teasing out a past only casually mentioned.
Quibbles? Well, it drags in the second half, but that could be because its depressiveness is so hard to take after the comedic punches of the first half. I wasn’t particularly taken by Veronica del Cerro’s Nina, which didn’t quite make the switch from earthy vibrancy to broken fragility. But it is one of the hardest roles in the canon. And the snatches of R.E.M. songs just didn’t do it for me. Again, these are minor issues with what is overall a fine production at a theater company that consistently delivers. It’s a bittersweet night out.
City Shifting Blog
Chekhov meets Theater J
The Seagull on 16th Street
22nd June 2009
written by Emily
It’s tough to critique an adaptation when you haven’t seen the original, so I won’t try. (Though scrolling over the Seagull on Google Books, I’m noticing how closely this production adhered to the original script). As a work of its own, P and I thoroughly enjoyed The Seagull on 16th Street: it’s funny (yet tragic—appropriately Chekhov), full of well-weaved themes, and impressively acted. There were few moments that my mind drifted, a compliment to the artistic director, considering the play is almost 150 minutes long. There were times that P and I didn’t get the Jewish allusions, which I suppose is to be expected from two “goys,” a word used in the play (and one I had to look up when I got home!). We were particularly impressed with the acting. Both Jerry Whiddon as Trigorin and Naomi Jacobson as Arkadina were outstanding (pictured below)—there’s a PG-13 scene with the two of them romping that will certainly have you appreciating the art of stage performance. Tip: For those of you under 35, all tickets to Theater J performances are half price, which means that on the least expensive night, Sunday, you can get in for $15.