It was about ideas. Big ideas.
What every play should be about.
What every play should be about.
– Dorn
In a letter to a
friend in 1895, Chekhov famously described the play he was working on as “a comedy
– three f., six m., four acts, a landscape (a view of a lake), much
conversation about literature, little action, and five tons of love.” While it
is a rather simplistic reduction of the play, it is nonetheless quite a
succinct summary. If you were to examine the play, peel back its layers and try
to get inside each of Chekhov’s characters, you’d find that ultimately it’s a
play about love in all its different guises; at the same time, however, in true
Chekhovian fashion, it’s not particularly ‘about’ any one thing, except perhaps
Life.
The play was, of
course, The Seagull, and like the
best works of literature, it transcends the centuries and is still as fresh and
bold and groundbreaking as the day it was first performed. And, like the
classics, every so often a production comes along that cuts to the very heart
of what it is about that you cannot help but be struck by its beauty, elegance
and rawness. For me, that production was the State Theatre Company of South
Australia’s The
Seagull, presented as part of the Adelaide Festival.
