THE SEAGULL Reviews

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 7:20pm

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

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 7:28pm

The Associated Press is a Rave:

'The disappointed souls who populate "The Seagull," Anton Chekhov's exquisite tale of regret by way of ill-fated romance, have never looked or, what is more important, sounded better.

They have arrived on Broadway courtesy of London's Royal Court Theatre, and the result is a revelation. There have been several productions of "The Seagull" in New York within the last year or so but none has had the clarity and emotional impact of Christopher Hampton's new translation. Hampton's crisp, clean adaptation lays the groundwork for director Ian Rickson's uncommonly lucid revival that stars Kristin Scott Thomas (making her Broadway debut) as the supremely self-absorbed actress Arkadina...'

http://www.fox59.com/pages/landing_entertainment/?A-revelatory-Seagull-starring-Kristin-Sc=1&blockID=79689&feedID=13

[Sauja]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 7:33pm

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).

[blaxx]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 7:37pm

Mixed to negative.

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 7:37pm

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

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 7:39pm

No, it's more Mixed: Gardner thinks Sarsgaard pulls the production down, but loved everything else.

[blaxx]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 7:52pm

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

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 9:09pm

Word of Mouth is Mixed-to-Negative:

FRED: "If Legally Blonde: The Musical is a cupcake, this is brocholi... but the older you get, you kinda like brocholi... this was brocholi with cheese sauce... it's absolutely worth it."

WHITNEY: "This is the kind of play that was best left as a book (and I don't know if it was adapted from a book), but... I kinda want some instant gratification [from a play], just tell me what it's about... it's not worth it."

MICHAEL: "I felt like I needed to read a lot more books before I saw the play again..."

http://www.broadway.com/The-Seagull/broadway_reviews/5011967

Updated On: 10/2/08 at 09:09 PM

[Plum]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 9:50pm

o_O We're counting this as an actual review?

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 9:58pm

WORD OF MOUTH isn't the market for Russian drama.

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 10:10pm

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

[SingingCats]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 10:30pm

Times is positive.

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/theater/reviews/03seag.html?ref=theater

Quotes from Ben's review:

"The careful cultivation of such transparency, to the
point that we feel instinctively tuned into the minds of
every individual onstage, helps to make this “Seagull"
the finest and most fully involving production of Chekhov
that I have ever known."

"It is, to make honest use of the language of hucksters, a limited,
once-in-a-lifetime offer, as the show runs only through Dec.
21."

Updated On: 10/2/08 at 10:30 PM

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 10:31pm

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...

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 10:33pm

It's a rave:

"Silence is never empty in Ian Rickson’s magnificent production of “The Seagull,” which opened Thursday night at the Walter Kerr Theater. When a hush descends on Chekhov’s restless country estate dwellers — as it often does, abrupt and unbidden — the air remains alive with crosscurrents of thought, clashing chords of longing and the steady thrum of time passing. Brought to life by a superlative ensemble led by Kristin Scott Thomas, the thwarted souls of “The Seagull” are as self-revealing in frozen speechlessness as they are in frantic flights of conversation."

[SingingCats]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 10:33pm

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 10:36pm

Oh. Here it is.

Ben Brantley of the New York Times is a Rave to End All Raves:

'...With sly brilliance Mr. Sarsgaard presents Trigorin as an awkward, reticent man transformed by a worshipful public into a closely watched dandy. Power has, in a sense, been thrust upon him, and he exercises it with a passivity that is equal parts purring smugness and self-contempt.

Ms. Mulligan’s delectably dewy but determined Nina is just the girl to rouse him from his lethargy. More than any actress I’ve seen, she captures the raw hunger within Nina’s ambition, the ravening vitality as well the vulnerability. This is no mere fluttery sacrificial seagull. There’s a reason that the mother-fixated Konstantin falls in love with her.

Despite the solipsism shared by everyone in this “Seagull,” you don’t doubt that they care for one another, that even that archnarcissist Arkadina loves her son and brother. This in turn makes us care when the tone shades to black in the final act.

Throughout the play death has insinuated its presence in a whisper, whenever someone falls down or a shot is heard. Everyone laughs in nervous relief after such episodes. There comes a point when someone falls down and doesn’t get up. What was funny isn’t funny anymore. This beautiful production makes that transition with the devastating stealth of life itself.'

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/theater/reviews/03seag.html

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/2/08 at 11:57pm

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

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/3/08 at 12:00am

The Newark Star-Ledger is Very Negative:

'...All piercing eyes and sharp features, Thomas is an energetic Arkadina who whirls off into little dramatic flurries indicating the diva's it's-all-about-me nature. Similar to the younger couple's lack of rapport, Thomas strikes few sparks with the bushy-bearded Sarsgaard's quiet, introspective Trigorin.

Perhaps that's the director's point about the story: Nobody connects with anyone else.

None of the other actors make much of an impression other than Zoe Kazan, whose restless Masha seems not so much mournful about her life as irritated by the dreary household.

Can't blame her. The Royal Court's import will appeal most to those who prefer their Chekhov on the dark side.'

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/arts/index.ssf/2008/10/theres_a_chill_in_the_air_arou.html

Updated On: 10/8/08 at 12:00 AM

[ashbash1990]

Posted: 10/3/08 at 1:08am

the word of mouth review was hilarious...

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/3/08 at 7:22am

The New York Post is a four-star rave:

"KRISTIN Scott Thomas is an actor who doesn't act. Rather, she moves into a character, breathing the same air as a human reality.

It's a style heaven-sent for the plays and people of Anton Chekhov, as she's now demonstrating as Arkadina, the overbloomed actress who sweeps her way through "The Seagull" in the wonderfully subtle production that opened last night.

.....

Arkardina is a great role, and Scott Thomas - the classic beauty of "The English Patient" and the jaded pal of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" - gives a great performance. With her leonine patrician profile, puffs of dismay, snorts of delight and petty diva excesses, she gives a perfect portrait of an actress close to the top of that first downward swoop."

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10032008/entertainment/theater/gliding_with_a_snort_beyond_times_border_131877.htm

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 10/3/08 at 7:25am

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

[BustopherPhantom]

Posted: 10/3/08 at 8:34am

John Simon is Negative:

'...The acting is mostly good, though the casting and direction are questionable. The women are either exaggerated or misrepresented: The always fascinating Scott Thomas is prodded into an Arkadina even more actressy than the text already calls for; Zoe Kazan's Masha is more histrionic than written. Carey Mulligan's basically good Nina doesn't quite convey her mad self-projection into the shot seagull.

Among the men, Mackenzie Crook, as the lovable Konstantin, looks like a cross between a wastrel and a ghoul, and neither Peter Sarsgaard's Trigorin nor Art Malik's Dorn, though otherwise fine, suggests these characters' envied strong appeal to women.

Director Ian Rickson's pacing, alternating between hyperactivity (a lot of bustle) and inertia (inordinate pauses) detracts from the prescribed conventionality. I'm not sure how many swallows it takes to make a summer, but I'm certain that one "Seagull" really well done would have been quite sufficient to establish Chekhov's genius and satisfy our hunger for nourishing theater.'

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601098&sid=aIis.so78TE8&refer=movie

[Calvin]

Posted: 10/3/08 at 9:37am

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

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 10/3/08 at 9:46am

I'm inclined to agree more with Simon than Brantley. I really had problems with the Trigorin, the Konstantin and the Masha. I've always come away disappointed with any performance I've actually seen of the play and think it may boil down to its being so beautifully crafted that one false note and the whole thing deflates.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 10/3/08 at 10:24am

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.