THE SEAGULL Reviews

Hey, did you guys know THE SEAGULL is opening tonight?

Variety is Very Positive:

'...The production's one unsatisfying note is Sarsgaard. The insight and intelligence so evident in the actor's screen roles get muffled in his curiously spent performance. His passionless Trigorin lends weight to the notion that Arkadina is drawn to him solely for the reflected glow of his fame. But while he does slowly reveal the opportunistic worm beneath the self-possessed surface, Sarsgaard appears to be struggling to get a read on his role for much of the play.

Still, one uncertain characterization in a panorama of so many full-bodied, revelatory ones does little to dull the incandescence or the overwhelming emotional impact of this illuminating production.'

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117938571.html?categoryid=33&cs=1

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USA Today's review is also up:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2008-10-02-seagull_N.htm

I'd call it mixed, but I'll leave it to you, Bustopher, if you want to pull a quote and make the call.

I thought the production was mesmerizing when I saw it on Tuesday but can't say that I disagree that Sarsgaard's performance is the weak link (though still admirable).

Thank you for the honor, Sauja! And you were right, by the way.

USA Today gives the show 2 1/2 Stars out of 4:

'Sarsgaard doesn't rise to the challenges confronting him any more than his complex and crucial character does. It might be an overstatement to say that his curiously awkward, lackluster performance fatally wounds this Seagull (* * ½ out of four), which opened Thursday at the Walter Kerr Theatre, but only a slight one...

...That's a shame, because the other legs in Trigorin's romantic triangle could hardly be sturdier. Leading lady Kristin Scott Thomas, who earned an Olivier Award in the Royal Court's London staging, is a witty, poignant Arkadina, revealing a nervous fragility in the fading thespian who lives with and clings to Trigorin. As the doomed ingénue Nina, who suffers even more for her lover's callousness, fellow West End import Carey Mulligan is equally lovely and moving, at once a fresh-faced foil and a worthy rival to the elegant but vulnerable Arkadina...'

http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2008-10-02-seagull_N.htm

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I would think he said they were good in the bad show, but I guess mixed is more optimistic.

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o_O We're counting this as an actual review?

Talkin' Broadway is Positive:

'...The rest of the production, if hardly moribund, is less innovative. The set and costumes (Hildegard Bechtler) and the lights (Peter Mumford) are exquisitely shabby representations of life on the estate of Arkadina’s brother, Sorin, but presage too much by being in mourning for the world long before the characters are. The other actors, too, haven’t found much in the way of new forms: Peter Wight dissolves with a too-anxious rapidity as the ailing Sorin; Pearce Quigley and Zoe Kazan, as the cat-and-mouse schoolteacher Medvedenko and the servant girl Masha, can’t overcome their own superfluity opposite a Konstantin and Nina who fulfill their typically reflective roles in the story.

Perhaps the most fascinating casualty is Art Malik. His doctor Dorn is strangely vague, noticeably less in tune than tends to be the case with the deeper meanings of the sea changes taking place around him. This is not, however, surprising, and under Rickson’s leadership, you don’t much miss him. The battles that Arkadina, Trigorin, Konstantin, and Nina wage with their own obsolescence are far more interesting this time around, and don’t need a realist to expose them.

The saddest and scariest thing about these people is that when they’re about to walk to their doom, they’re doing it with their eyes wide open. They’ve seen firsthand the boundaries between truth and fiction, even as they blur them themselves, and are forsaking those lessons, probably to their own peril. When this Seagull is setting up and paying off such moments, it’s the youngest, freshest show on Broadway.'

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/world/Seagull2008.html

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HOW ARE YOU DOING THAT?!

I have been looking for the Times review for the last half-hour, and you come out of nowhere with...

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TheaterMania is a Rave:

'While Scott Thomas' success is somewhat expected, given her film and stage pedigree, Carey Mulligan's stunning turn as the impressionable and eventually destroyed Nina arrives less heralded. Playing Nina is often a perilous shoal on which young thespians founder, but the fair, fresh-faced Mulligan runs the character's gamut with touching ardor. Entering breathlessly on the run in one of set-and-costume designer Hildegard Bechtler's delicate Russian-summer dresses and then delivering the plummy speech Konstantin writes for the play his mother mocks, Mulligan instantly sends early Tony Award vibes. At play's end, she forcibly attacks the last scene where Nina, now a failed actress, returns from Moscow to visit the increasingly despondent Konstantin. While Mulligan isn't the thoroughly broken doll that Nina can be, the devastation she's experienced is visible enough to make an indelible impression....'

http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/15443

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the word of mouth review was hilarious...

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The Journal News is a rave:

"The word for the new production of "The Seagull" on Broadway is lucid.

That's a trickier accomplishment than you might think.

This production of Anton Chekhov's frequently produced play, in a new translation by Christopher Hampton, opened last night at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

Kristin Scott Thomas, who is better known as a movie star ("The English Patient"), plays Arkadina, the famous actress who comes home to her family's country estate. As famous actresses tend to be, she is so self-absorbed that she misses the point that her son is genuinely suicidal......"

http://lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081003/ENTERTAINMENT/810030308/1164

Updated On: 10/3/08 at 07:25 AM

I dare them to put "broccoli with cheese sauce" as a quote for an ad.

Agreed, Ed. Its a tough-ass play. I loved the production, the specificity of the relationships. But I can still see why some people might be turned off by the gloom of it all.

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