The sounds of an Irish jig fill the theater before the action starts — our first tip-off that this Culture Project revival isn’t going to be your typical “Seagull.”
And it’s not. Adapted by Irish playwright Thomas Kilroy, this version resets Chekhov’s classic to late-19th-century Ireland. The fact that the characters’ names have been changed is but one of its many startling aspects.
Here the famed writer Trigorin has become Aston, while the vainglorious actress Irina, played by Trudie Styler (a k a Mrs. Sting), is named Isobel. The lovelorn Masha is now Mary, who dresses in black not because she’s “in mourning for my life,” as Chekhov put it so wonderfully, but more prosaically because “I’m so sad . . . black is for sadness.”
Back when this “Seagull” played London’s Royal Court in 1981, the cast included Alan Rickman and Harriet Walter — oh, for a time machine!
Audiences there were probably more engaged by this Celtic-centric version, intended to parallel the decline of the Russian intelligentsia with the shifting social landscape of Irish society.
But that will mean little to American audiences other than providing a certain novelty. As when Isobel, watching her son’s disastrous attempt at a modern theater piece, disgustedly exclaims, “Oh good Lord, it’s one of those Celtic things.” Or the references to London’s West End, Dickens and the Brontë sisters.
Otherwise, director Max Stafford-Clark’s staging is rough-hewn and unevenly acted. There are some standout performances: Alan Cox, so brilliant in the recent off-Broadway production of “Cornelius,” is an amusingly neurotic Aston, while Amanda Quaid’s bitter Mary, trapped in a loveless marriage, is heartbreaking.
The other performers fail to rise to that level, especially Styler, who wears a succession of outrageously garish, unflattering costumes. Although her past acting credits include a stint with the Royal Shakespeare Company and several films, she seems out of her depth here. Her affected turn is effective only in its more comedic moments, as when she throws herself at Aston like a fish flopping onto a boat.
There are other revisionist touches here, too, including Constantine’s uncomfortably sexual advances toward his mother. But they do little to enliven this “Seagull,” which seems as lifeless as the stuffed version that figures so prominently in the final moments.