I start with a puzzle. The programme told us that 'sea gull' was not the proper translation of the Russian 'Чайка' at all. Lake gull would be better but that does not sound very well, nor does gull alone, so successive translators have settled for sea gull.
Subsequent investigation at google was inconclusive. The Russian word has a number of meanings, of which sea gull is given as one. Other options include a sort of limousine used by senior Russian officials, tea and a terrestrial navigation system. It also seems to be quite a common proper name. The term 'lake gull' turns up the amusing suggestion that you might just as well call them dump ducks for their liking for landfill sites. While the term 'marsh gull' turns up the suggestion that it is an alternative name for a herring gull with yellow legs - and the picture included above left. The common herring gull has grey legs. All of which leaves me with no idea where the programme is coming from. Perhaps the research assistant concerned, wanting to seem clever, got a bit carried away with google after a liquid lunch.
Perhaps also, with sea gull, we are losing the association in the Russian, to a Russian in a Russia with its lots of lakes, of birds over the lake. The sounds of birds calling over the lake. The sight of birds flying low over the lake at dawn or at dusk. We have lost the soft nostalgia for the countryside, with sea gull bringing in the sea side nuisance to take its place. Different for land locked Russians, very few of whom ever do sea side.
Then we have the business of the adaptation. Chekov did not write that long ago and he wrote in a Russian which translates quite well. So why bother to adapt this play, a very good play, at all? What do we add by mucking about with this masterpiece? Not many people these days would ask the Chinese artist knocking out your copy of the 'Mona Lisa' to include a few custom tweaks, perhaps your pet dog in the lady's lap, as this would be seen as not showing proper respect for the Old Master. So why the urge to adapt - with the programme telling us that there are more than 25 adaptations of this play in print, in English alone? Perhaps like the aforementioned research assistant, the producer wanted to seem clever, by going one better than this Old Master?
Notwithstanding, a full house, including plenty of people of working age. Maybe something to do with it not being a matinée. We didn't spot any celebrities, or even any entities, although we did have the consolation prize of a ITV3 stalwart on the stage (see below).
The play started, for us to find that once again the National Theatre had lavished a huge amount of TLC on the set, including on this occasion a lake complete with water, of impressive size from where we were sitting, with the result that a fair bit of the action consisted in splashing about in the water. But they got a bonus point for playing Lotto on what looked very like my parents' folding card table, a table which still graces our front room here in Epsom.
The scene was rather dominated by Anna Chancellor as the older actress, Irina. But somehow she seemed to have a heaviness of person and personality that did not seem to quite suit the role. The only person that I recognised, although not by name, was Adrian Lukis as Dorn the doctor, whom I knew for his regular & sterling service on ITV3 murder mystery drama. What I had not realised until I checked was that he had also been the dashing villain Wickham in a Pride & Prejudice of twenty years ago, at which time he looked a good deal younger and slimmer than he does now. A scene, which once again, was rather too large, either for me, for the cast, or both. See reference 1.
Two things which I still remember did not work very well. Near the start, there is a joke about a village singer and an octave. The producer seems not to have understood that the point was that the joke had been told too often, not that it was not a joke at all, with the result that the joke was lost on me until I re-read it later. Then at the very end, the producer made a regular ceremony of the suicide - which as a matter of suicidal fact may well be spot on, but for me the whole thing dragged on and the impact of the suicide was lost. I thought the original managed rather better. Evidence for the allegation made later over beverages, that adapters of serious plays often fall prey to over-egging things. The adapter can't resist the temptation to add all kinds of twists and twiddles, to make this or that point so much better (for today's audience) than it was in the original.
Sadly, the adapted play rather dragged, despite only running for around two hours - much more me-friendly than the three that seems to be the norm these days. Overall, disappointing.
On the way home, I wondered about why people want to become actors and actresses. What is it that is so wonderful about spending large chunks of your time pretending to be someone else and about spending large chunks of your time in seedy, not to say squalid circumstances? That is to say, drafty rehearsal rooms, dirty railway carriages and seedy digs. Not to mention the usually precarious footing on the crowded ladder to success. It is one thing to enjoy plays; quite another to be in them.
Which thought prompts two confessions. First, as a child at a school which did drama, I knew that being an actor was the thing to be in a theatrical operation. But it only took seconds on the stage for me to realise that I had absolutely no talent for it at all. Second, on this present occasion, I had some trouble deciding whether I had seen the play before or not. It is, after all, a famous play and it seemed likely that I had, but it also seemed quite likely that I was getting muddled up with the very different, if near contemporary, play about a duck by Ibsen. In the end I decided that I had seen it before, because, towards the end, I had the very clear feeling that I had heard the lines about Trigorin not cutting the pages of Trepelev's story before. To be fair to me, both plays did involve large dead birds.
Post play activities included first a reading of a proper version of the play, the translation by Constance Garnett, followed by reading a couple of what Chekov called jests, 'The Bear' and 'The Proposal'. Both very funny and either of which would make a splendid overture to a more serious endeavour. But I had never heard of them before, so they can't be used in that way in this country. However, reading the play proper did remind me what a good play it was, full of incidents, strands and layers, only very loosely held together by the career of the star-struck Nina. Full of interesting stuff about the perils of the creative life, be that on the stage or at the writing table. It struck me, that what Chekov had written was really a dramatised essay, rather in the way that Aldous Huxley used, not very many years later, to dress up his essays as novels.
Then second, there was the Anna Chancellor television version of Mapp & Lucia, this last being a long-time favourite with BH. Not without merit, but not a patch on the Geraldine McEwan version from thirty or more years ago. To an even greater extent than in the play, Chancellor manages to come across with a rather heavy personality, without the far more telling lightness and fragility that McEwan brought to the television role.
PS: despite there being too much cloud for there too be many aeroplanes at Earlsfield, there were a lot of stars to be seen when we got home to Epsom. At least a lot for Epsom, where it is rare to be able to see anything other than the brightest stars. Planets even.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-unfinished-journey.html.
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