Just the third production from the new #TCTheater company The Modern Rep that launched earlier this year, their new adaptation of Chekhov's first play
The Seagull perfectly exemplifies
their mission statement: "a classics theater for today." The company began (before it even had a name) with a never-before-produced-locally Oscar Wilde play
Salomé, and then continued with Shakespeare's most popular romcom
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Both excellent and inventive and modern interpretations of the work, but this
Seagull feels even more so. "Reimagining the canon for a contemporary audience, THE MODERN REP believes that classic texts are not relics to be preserved, but living works meant to be interrogated, disrupted, and brought vividly into the present moment." Mission accomplished. Artistic Director Grant Sorenson adapted and directs the play, and has the characters speaking and acting like real people in our modern world. The themes of this 130-year-old play - generational conflict, the nature of art and theater, the struggles of the young people - all feel so current. Classics are classics because they still have something to say to and about our modern world, and The Modern Rep understands that deeply.
The Seagull continues through November 7 at The Modern Rep's warehouse space in Minneapolis' North Loop neighborhood.
The play begins when the famous actress Irina Arkadina comes home to the country lake house with her new young boyfriend Boris Trigorin, an author, in tow. There we meet her ailing brother Pyotr, the caretakers and their daughter Masha, and various other friends and neighbors. Irina's son Konstantin also lives there, an author and playwright who is desperate to impress his mother and earn her love (their relationship is complicated). Konstantin is in love with a neighbor named Nina, an aspiring actress, who becomes enamored of Trigorin and follows him back to Moscow to become a star. It doesn't go well for her, or for the people they left behind, as we find out when we check in on them two years later. There is much discussion of art and beauty and life, as these flawed humans try to make their way in the world.*
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| photo by Molly Jay |
The Modern Rep's space is essentially a black box theater, or in this case a white box, with white walls surrounding an open space. For this production, it's set up more like a traditional theater, with the performance space on one end (the opposite of previous shows in the space), and a half dozen rows of chairs on risers facing it. But the stage area does not look traditional, with a dozen or more vertical wooden posts, weathered and partially whitewashed, matching the exposed rafters in the ceiling so well that they almost look like they've always been there. More wooden boards crisscross the space at odd angles, forming interesting spaces for characters to sit or climb upon. It has an abstract effect of the woods at the country estate, or maybe the ruins of an old house, and provides an interesting playground for this excellent company of actors. With no wing space, actors often sit on the site of the stage waiting for their entrance, and in a couple of pivotal moments in the story, come out to stand in a line and watch, which heightens the effect of the scene.
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Konstantin (David Michaeli) and Nina (Linds Esch)
(photo by Molly Jay) |
This ten-person cast includes veterans of the #TCTheater stage, as well as new faces, and they're all perfectly cast, and make these characters feel like real people. On the veteran side we've got the great Christina Baldwin as Irina, who does comedy as well as she does tragedy, a necessity for this piece. Patrick Bailey is endearing as Uncle Pyotr, whom everyone dotes on. Vanessa Gamble and Bruce Abas believably portray an unhappily married couple, the caretakers of the estate. The former is having a secret love affair with Laura Esping's town doctor, a role typically played by a man, the gender swap creating another level of interest and modernity. In the younger generation, we have Steve Mallers as the charming but dangerous Trigorin, Lana Breheney as a very Gen Z Masha, and Leo Rossmiller playing against type as the nerdy and awkward teacher in love with her. But in many ways the play belongs to David Michaeli as Konstantin and Linds Esch as Nina, their tragic love story and search for meaning in life and art at the heart of the piece. David came on the scene a few years ago and just gets better every time I see him, here with a beautiful and heartbreaking performance as the tortured young artist. Linds is relatively new to me, and is a true find, she's just radiant as the eager young actor, and later devastating as the broken down Nina. I definitely saw some shades of
Hamlet in this story, particularly in this relationship, and in the relationship between Konstantin and his mother (also beautifully done).
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the love triangle of Semyon (Leo Rossmiller), Masha (Lana Breheney),
and Konstantin (David Michaeli, photo by Molly Jay) |
The cast is dressed in modern clothes, that span the four seasons as the play does. Irina dresses in chic flowing dresses appropriate for a diva, Boris in well-tailored suits, the country dwellers a little more rustic and casual. We see light summer clothes, and later layers and coats as the weather turns. The sound design includes some modern pop songs, as well as classics, and sound and lighting effects help set the tone. Everything about the show creates a very thoughtfully curated experience. (Design by Grant Sorenson, with lighting design by Shannon Elliott.)
Chekhov called this play a comedy, and it is, at times, but the overall effect is that of a tragedy. I've seen it a few times before, but had forgotten the details of the ending. It's brutal and devastating and shocking, but also so relevant. It brings to mind the loneliness epidemic, the rising rates of suicide among young people, and the desire to become "a star" at all costs. And then there's the whole discussion about "theater is dying," that feels particularly germane to what's been going on locally. But I don't worry about that too much, because at least in a grungy warehouse in the North Loop, theater is very much alive.
