"The Seagull". Oxford Playhouse
Chekhov's genius, as well as his greatest challenge to an acting company, is that his plays seem to contain a lot of words and not much action. Doctors, actors, aristocrats and servants talk endlessly about their thwarted ambitions, unrequited loves and childhood memories, while the sun sets behind their fading Russian homesteads. But there's actually a lot going on. These lives are submerged, concealed and betrayed by the very text that keeps them part of polite society. It's the job of the actors and the production to reveal that inner life in all its comic tragedy, without ever spilling the metaphorical samovar. Lighthouse Productions have found an ingenious way to accomplish this in their passionate and intelligent interpretation of The Seagull at Oxford Playhouse. Specifically, director Alys Young has introduced not one but two boldly original concepts. First, the set. Rather than the usual, realistic country house with a lake, a temporary stage, and summer grasses w...
