The Seagull

Producing The Seagull has been so disastrous for so many professional groups that we may all feel considerable parochial pride in the amazing success of the Harvard Dramatic Club. Not that everything in the show is magnificent beyond the bounds of description. In fact, description of the sets, lighting and a few--fortunately very few--performances would be so depressing as to sound like condemnation. What this production does well--mainly in the line of interpretation and acting--it does exceptionally well, and Chekhov himself has, by his style of writing, kept what is bad from dimming the whole effect. Unlike most plays of direction and climax, in which one performance reinforces another, Chekhov's plays allow no role to interfere with any other. Unless bad performances are in the majority their only result is to produces a passing annoyance with incompetence, not to ruin the tone for the evening.

When produced with a budget and talent pool that is relatively unlimited, The Seagull seems too demanding in its delicate excellence, and being several cuts below perfect each production failed. In this case, since one can expect little more than a game try at perfection, the audience is left with a warm glow at the thought that a Harvard group has done so well.

The main fuel for glow is a trio of principal players: Elinor Fuchs as a warm, vain and fading actress, Wendy Mackenzie as an ingenuous country girl who becomes more or less great in betrayal, and Andre Gregory, playing an author whose weakness and fine sensibilities combine to ruin lives. These three set a hard mark for the rest with thoughtful portrayals designed intelligently to develop and exploit the respective characters. Especially in Gregory's case one sees how his characterization during the early, seemingly unimportant scenes, is a well calculated build-up to his later scenes. All three deserve more than the credit normally accorded to local performers.

Only a slight fault of interpretation or stiffness in acting technique separates most of the others in the cast from the standard set by the three principles. Robert Beaty understands his part as a kindly, ineffectual old man but plays him as something of a crochet and far too sharp a thinker. Colgate Salsbury lacks the proper touch of fatuous pomposity and caricature in his version of a bumptuous farm manager. But neither man is at all bad in his role. Lee Jeffries and Patricia Leathem are good at saying their lines but have done little to improve on them in a way that might capture attention. The general fault of these highly competent actors is a tendency to make their characters overly intellectual, partly the result of declaiming, rather than feeling, lines.

Only Richard Smithies and Thomas Whedon seem far off in their roles. Smithies is biting, ironic and sharp in a part that calls, for an understanding, kindly and perhaps slightly silly, doctor. Whedon simply does not have the feel of his part. He turns a sensitive young poet of almost professional soulfulness, whom Chekhov both admires for his earnestness and satirizes for his foolishness, into a hard-speaking young whiner who lacks any grace or charm. There is no air of authenticity in Whedon's voice or reading: only loud and soft tones.

Stephen Aaron's direction is remarkable for two things. First that there are only the two mentioned major exceptions to the high level of interpretation and acting, and second that he usually shows enough faith in Chekhov's writing ability not to force laughs or pathos in places where the author did not obviously intend them. Aaron, of course, shares in the honor of the night. In mitigation of the poor scenery and lighting, by John Ratte and Jordan Jelks, respectively, the facilities at Peabody are miserable and The Seagull calls for complications in both lines. As already pointed out none of these defects radically detract from a pleasant evening of good theatre.