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SEAGULL SOARS TO SUCCESS

Kristin Scott Thomas gives "a memorable performance"

Tuesday March 6,2007

By Paul Callan

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The Seagull
Royal Court, London 020 7565 5000

CHEKOV explores, with keen finesse, the melancholic side of the human condition.

When The Seagull was first staged in Russia in 1896, audiences were initially puzzled, being unused to a work in which the playwright emphasised the characters rather than the plot.

This was a new literary form and these characters, all very finely drawn, are allowed a subtlety of movement in what is a deeply sad (and very Russian) story of shattered hopes and dreams that contrast with a lust for life and love.

Set in a grand house in the countryside in Tsarist Russia, 10 characters are on a whirligig of emotion and complex relationships, ranging from narcissist to masochism, as well as poetry, death, even art and eventually sorrow.

Chekov is basically saying that love is just that - sorrow. For real beauty is born from suffering.

Mackenzie Crook, as the doomed and unsuccessful playwright Konstantin, is helplessly in love with Nina, played so delicately by Carey Mulligan.

He is best known to the public as the puerile Gareth Keene in the TV hit The Office and as the gurning buccaneer standing near Johnny Depp in Pirates Of The Caribbean.

But he has the right gloomy and drawn appearance for the role and imbues the part with tortured emotion. He makes his anguish work and it consumes him - along with his desperate, unrequited love.

Mr Crook was brave to take on such a demanding and complicated role, but last night he carried it off with depth and shattering darkness. In this new version, translator Christopher Hampton has a cast to die for. Apart from the cadaverous Mr Crook, there is Art Malik as the bored and laid-back Dr Dorn, who shines by simply being languid.

But it is Kristin Scott Thomas, as the age-conscious Arkadina, who produces a memorable performance. She often delivers her lines with a brilliant comic timing and there is a splendid brittleness about her stage presence.

In the love scene with Tregorin, she makes the stage pulsate with wickedness and an edgy flirtation.

Tregorin is played quite outstandingly by Chiwetel Ejiofor who conveys the utter indolence of the character. It is a tribute to his skills that ethnicity never arises.

If there are any criticisms, it is that Carey Mulligan's Nina is a shade too girlie.

Director Ian Rickson keeps the play literally bouncing along, almost at the pace of a farce. And he obviously knows how to use some of the play's wonderful lines.

The Seagull is a breathless work with great and memorable utterances. And, inevitably, the one that receives the greatest appreciation (particularly from the ladies in the audience) was the memorable: "The women never forgive failure. "