Seagull (NHB Classic Plays)

Anton Chekhov, John Kerr, Charlotte Pyke, Joseph Blatchley

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781788502269
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

A striking version of Chekhov's classic play by Charlotte Pyke, John Kerr and Joseph Blatchley, restoring to the play the cuts demanded by the Russian censor in 1896.

In nineteenth-century rural Russia, an anxious young writer prepares the first performance of his new play for the two women in his life. The consequences are devastating, with everybody in love with the wrong person, and death hovering close by.

Through both comedy and tragedy, Seagull explores lives that are precariously balanced between love and indifference, success and failure, hope and despair.

This version of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull was first performed at the Arcola Theatre, London, in 2011.

'absorbingly vibrant - a Seagull that soars.' - The Times

'wonderfully nimble... the play feels fresh and vital... full of warmth and wit' - Stage

'new translation brings an immediacy and a vibrancy to the play that does it a world of good' - Whatsonstage.com

ACT ONE

A section of the park on SORIN’s estate. A wide avenue leads into the depths of the park and toward the lake. The avenue is blocked by a stage, which has been hastily erected for an amateur play. The lake is completely hidden from view. There are bushes to the left and right. A few chairs, a small table. On the trees there are garlands of coloured lights. The sun has only just set.

YAKOV and other workmen can be heard coughing and hammering behind the lowered curtain.

MASHA and MEDVEDENKO enter from the left, returning from a walk.

MEDVEDENKO. Why do you go around in black all the time?

MASHA. Because I’m mourning my life. I’m unhappy!

MEDVEDENKO. But why!? (Reflecting.) Excuse me, but I just don’t understand… You’re hale and hearty, your father’s not rich but he’s not starving! You should try living on my wages! Twenty-three roubles a month; a pittance, and that’s before deductions! Do I go about ‘mourning my life’?

They sit.

MASHA. Money isn’t everything, you know! You can be happy without money.

MEDVEDENKO. Oh, really! And I’m supposed to feed my mother, my two sisters, my baby brother and myself, on twenty-three roubles a month, am I? D’you want us to give up tea, sugar, tobacco? Is that your theory? Maybe we should give up eating and drinking altogether? That’s the reality: yesterday – I had to cough up fifteen kopecks for a new flour sack, do you know why? Because some tramps had stolen the old one! Fifteen kopecks! You see; it’s every which way!

MASHA (glancing at the stage). Isn’t it time for the play?

MEDVEDENKO. Yes: a theatrical work by Konstantin Gavrilovich Treplev, starring Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya! Tonight’s performance will be a true expression of their love for each other and their souls will unite forever in a single flash of creative inspiration. Unlike your soul and mine; they don’t even meet halfway. I’m in love with you. I long for you. I can’t stay at home for longing. It takes me two and a half hours to walk here and back and all I get from you is… is… ‘indifferentism’. I know, I understand. I’ve got a large family. I’ve got no money… Who wants a man who can’t even feed himself?! I’m a walking disaster; let’s face it.

MASHA. You talk such rubbish! (Takes snuff.) Your love is very touching, but I can’t return it, and that’s all there is to it. (Offers him the snuffbox.) Have some.

MEDVEDENKO. I won’t.

Pause.

MASHA. It’s so muggy. There’s bound to be a storm tonight. It always comes down to money with you! Money or philosophy. There are far worse things than poverty, believe me! I would go begging, I would dress in rags, a thousand times over, rather than… Oh, what’s the point, you wouldn’t understand…

SORIN and KONSTANTIN enter.

SORIN (leaning on a cane). You see, my boy, the problem is, I’ve never liked the countryside. It’s as simple as that. I never have and I never will. Last night: I went to bed at ten and this morning I woke up at nine! Eleven hours’ sleep! I felt as if my brain had been glued to my skull! (Laughs.) And today after dinner, same thing! Off I drop again! Now I feel like death warmed up. And so on and so on. It’s a nightmare, that’s what it is…

KONSTANTIN. I know, you really should live in town, uncle. (Sees MASHA and MEDVEDENKO.) What are you doing here? I’m sorry but you can’t stay here, we’ll call you when it’s time. Please go now.

SORIN (to MASHA). Maria Ilinichna, do me a favour, will you? Ask your father to unchain the dog; it was howling all night long. My sister didn’t get a minute’s sleep again!

MASHA. If you want to ask him, ask him, but please don’t expect me to. I won’t. He says that without dogs, thieves would have all the millet in the barn.

KONSTANTIN. To hell with him and his millet!

MASHA (to MEDVEDENKO). Come on.

MEDVEDENKO (to KONSTANTIN). You’ll tell us when the performance begins?

They both exit.

SORIN. And now the dog will be howling all night again. See what I mean? I never get my way in the country. There’s always something: if it’s not millet, it’s dogs; if not dogs, horses they won’t let me have; and so on and so on! I used to get twenty-eight days’ annual leave, so I’d come here to relax and all that. But the minute I got here they’d bombard me with ‘oats’ and ‘millet’ and ‘barley’, and so on and so on… My only wish was to escape straight back to town. (Laughs.) The best part in coming was the going! But now I’m retired, where else can I go, when all’s said and done? Like it or not, you have to live…

YAKOV (to KONSTANTIN). We’re going for a swim, Konstantin Gavrilich.

KONSTANTIN. All right, but you must be in your positions in ten minutes. (Looks at his watch.) We should start soon.

YAKOV. Right you are, sir. (Exits.)

KONSTANTIN (glancing at the stage). So how d’you like my theatre, uncle? This is the real thing! No set, no scenery, no painted backcloth, just this curtain, and the lake. We’ll begin as soon as the moon rises, at half past eight.

SORIN. Splendid!

KONSTANTIN. But the whole thing will be ruined if Nina is late. She should be here by now! Trouble is; her father and stepmother keep her virtually locked up. Getting out of the house is like breaking out of prison. (Straightens his uncle’s tie.) Why are you such a mess? Look at yourself! Your beard, your hair. You need a haircut…

SORIN (smoothing his beard). Story of my life. I’ve always looked like a drunk and that’s about it. Even as a boy… and so on. Dead loss as far as women were concerned. (Sitting.) Why is my sister in such a foul temper?

KONSTANTIN. Because she’s bored. (Sitting down next to SORIN.) And because she’s jealous. She’s afraid that novelist of hers will take a fancy to Nina, so, she hates my play, she hates the performance and she hates me! She hasn’t read it, of course, but she already hates it.

SORIN (laughing). My dear boy, aren’t you imagining all this…?

KONSTANTIN. She’s in a foul temper because she can’t bear the fact that Nina will shine on this pathetic little stage and not her. (Glances at his watch.) She’s a real ‘case’, my mother! She’s talented certainly, clever and kind, she’ll devote herself to the sick and the needy like a ministering angel, she’ll weep buckets over a book, recite Nekrasov by heart, but you just try praising Eleanora Duse or Sarah Bernhardt to her face. Oh my God! No, no, no! Everything must revolve around her! Her extraordinary performance in La Dame aux camélias, her triumph in The Fumes of Life. And because here in the countryside we don’t provide her with her daily dose of praise, of ecstatic notices, of bravos and encores, she has withdrawal symptoms and becomes foul-tempered and bored: ‘it’s our fault’, ‘we all hate her’! And then she’s also superstitious and mean. She’ll be terrified by three candles on a coffin, or by the thirteenth day of the month, and will have a complete fit if you ask her for money! And that, despite having 70,000 in the bank in Odessa – which I know for a fact!

SORIN. Ah, ‘the delicate nature of poets’, as Horace would have it! You’ve got yourself all worked up because you’re convinced your mother hates your play, and so on, but it’s not true, your mother adores you. Calm down, my dear boy.

KONSTANTIN (tearing the petals from a flower). My mother loves me – my mother loves me not, loves me – loves me not, loves me – loves me not. See, loves me not! Well, would you, if you wanted to have fun, go to parties, wear dazzling clothes, have love affairs and you had me as a constant reminder of how old you were? Of course you wouldn’t, you’d hate me! I’m over twenty-five, so when I’m around she’s forty-three and when I am not, she’s thirty-two! And then there’s her theatre, her ‘sacred art’: the salvation of humanity. She loves it and knows I despise it! Up goes the curtain on the inevitable drawing room with three walls, and there they all are, the geniuses, the high priests of her ‘sacred art’, bathed in electric light, playing at eating, drinking, walking, loving, wearing jackets, et cetera… et cetera… It’s one damned cliché after another. Our modern theatre is nothing but a mishmash of platitudes and insipid commonplaces repeated time and time again in a thousand different variations; trite littl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Original Production
• Introduction
• Characters
• The Seagull
• About the Authors
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information