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1993-04-08
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REVIEWS, Page 72 THEATERMaking a Forward Leap
By WILLIAM A. HENRY III
TITLE: THE SEAGULL
AUTHOR: Anton Chekhov
WHERE: Broadway
THE BOTTOM LINE: Its fizzled debut season behind it, Tony
Randall's national troupe offers its first creditable
production.
Every few years, someone tries to launch a national
ensemble to perform the classics, an American equivalent to
London's Royal National troupe or Paris' Comedie-Francaise. But
the effort has always foundered, often over questions of how to
finance it or because the very scope of the ambition stirred
audience expectations that no start-up group is likely to meet.
Last season Tony Randall brought his National Actors
Theater to Broadway with an overwrought version of The
Crucible, an unfunny slog through Feydeau's farce A Little Hotel
on the Side and a stupefyingly overacted rendition of The
Master Builder. At season's end, executive producer Manny
Kladitis said, "We know there were problems, but give us a
chance. A company has to walk before it can run."
Last week the Randall troupe opened a second season with,
as promised, a heartening leap forward. Its staging of The
Seagull is imperfect and at times campy, taking too literally
Chekhov's admonition that his plays are comedies. But it tells
the story beautifully and has several interesting ideas about
the text.
Jon Voight, returning to Broadway for the first time in 25
years, gives an unshowy performance as the celebrity writer
Trigorin that subtly conveys the character's lonely,
inward-looking obsession with his craft. As the actress
Arkadina, Tyne Daly stresses monstrous self-absorption. Not for
Daly the customary dotty unawareness of how she puts down her
son, a would-be avant-garde playwright; each belittling gesture
is calculated cruelty. As the son, Ethan Hawke solves the
play's pivotal problem, foreshadowing the youth's instability
and making clear why he and not his at-wit's-end beloved, Nina,
commits suicide.
In the staging by director Marshall Mason and set designer
Marjorie Bradley Kellogg, the first act takes place outdoors, by
a lake where Arkadina humiliates her son in his first artistic
venture. Although the action gradually moves indoors, the trees
never disappear. They stand throughout at the stage's edge,
silent sentinels recalling the bitter moment that brings on all
the play's ruin.