ABSTRACT
. . .You may say now that Komisarjevsky has toned Chekhov down, or you can say he has treated him naturally. Certainly this ‘Seagull’ is not so consciously dark. It is, I think, a pity that some of it is played so deliberately for laughs. One should smile at Masha whilst sympathising; Martita Hunt does not let one do this. It is not her fault that she is up against our memory of Margaret Swallow, the perfect Chekhovian actress. But she is, it struck me, too brisk, too hearty, not sufficiently beaten and bedraggled. Her bouts with the vodka are not the swigs of one who has made drink a refuge. Before, I remember Masha going to cupboards for her bottle; here, the decanter is on the table, quite respectably, among fruit. There is a world of difference. The character of Masha, or rather its interpretation, is altered, however, as most of the interpretations are altered. This is not a conventional reading of the play. The stresses are shifted. Constantin is jealous of Trigorin not only because he takes away Nina, but because he has already taken his mother. All the relationships are thus whirled round, as if on an astrological roulette wheel. Constantin, no longer able to worship his mother or, as technician, the author Trigorin, turns to Nina and his uncle. And Masha, instead of being a hopeless rival of Nina, is an unsuccessful substitute for his mother. In all the remarkable things that this causes, two stand out - the scene when Arcadina bandages her son's head, and the manner in which Gielgud, Trigorin, hands the play to Stephen Haggard as Constantin. He, of course, becomes the seagull, as no other actor could. It is a performance in which nothing is strained for, everything suggested, and it takes its place fittingly, with Peggy Ashcroft to help it, among the other more theatrical performances necessarily demanded by the parts. On reflection, perhaps the most striking thing about this production is the way that the boy grows under one's eyes in dramatic importance, so that one is ready for him to fill the stage without being aware of it, being only later aware that the others were so complete in themselves (has the game of lotto ever been better staged?) that they did not notice it. . . .
