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A flock of past Seagulls show Cate Blanchett and Thomas Ostermeier can make small details seismic | Michael Billington
The Oscar winner stars in the German director’s production of the Chekhov classic where ‘everything is open to interpretation’How does one stage Chekhov? His plays, embodying symphonic realism and equipped with precise visual and aural effects, would seem to defy massive reinterpretation. Yet we live in an age of director’s theatre and Benedict Andrews with Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard and Katie Mitchell and Jamie Lloyd with The Seagull have all, with varying degrees of success, offered distinctive visions of the plays. Next month sees another Seagull, “conceived and directed by Thomas Ostermeier”, coming to London’s Barbican with a cast headed by Cate Blanchett and Tom Burke. As a great admirer of Ostermeier’s radical updates of Ibsen – especially An Enemy of the People – I shall be fascinated to see how far he goes with Chekhov, in an adaptation by Duncan Macmillan.Having seen a flock of Seagulls over the years, I am struck by the seismic impact of small differences: in other words, casting, context and interpretation of character can alter one’s perspective without disrupting the period or setting. The first Seagull I ever saw, as a student critic, was an Old Vic production by John Fernald that opened at the Edinburgh festival in 1960. It was everything I had imagined classic English Chekhov to be except for one thing: the fact that Konstantin, the struggling young writer, was played by a 23-year-old actor fresh out of Rada and with a strong northern accent. Continue reading...
The Oscar winner stars in the German director’s production of the Chekhov classic where ‘everything is open to interpretation’
How does one stage Chekhov? His plays, embodying symphonic realism and equipped with precise visual and aural effects, would seem to defy massive reinterpretation. Yet we live in an age of director’s theatre and Benedict Andrews with Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard and Katie Mitchell and Jamie Lloyd with The Seagull have all, with varying degrees of success, offered distinctive visions of the plays. Next month sees another Seagull, “conceived and directed by Thomas Ostermeier”, coming to London’s Barbican with a cast headed by Cate Blanchett and Tom Burke. As a great admirer of Ostermeier’s radical updates of Ibsen – especially An Enemy of the People – I shall be fascinated to see how far he goes with Chekhov, in an adaptation by Duncan Macmillan.
Having seen a flock of Seagulls over the years, I am struck by the seismic impact of small differences: in other words, casting, context and interpretation of character can alter one’s perspective without disrupting the period or setting. The first Seagull I ever saw, as a student critic, was an Old Vic production by John Fernald that opened at the Edinburgh festival in 1960. It was everything I had imagined classic English Chekhov to be except for one thing: the fact that Konstantin, the struggling young writer, was played by a 23-year-old actor fresh out of Rada and with a strong northern accent. Continue reading...
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