Don't tell me about Chekhov, said my South American companion, declining an invitation to Anatomy of a Seagull. In Spanish, he is even more boring!Boy, did she miss something. Boring, this inventive production by Loose Canon Theatre Company, is not. Brutally entertaining, Chekhov's comedy about love and art is a fester and blunder of a play and tragically funny. The acting is pure and strong as vodka, the direction delivers and the massive interior of Smock Alley places you right in the grounds of Sorin's decaying country mansion. A single chandelier hangs in the centre, a desk sits off to the corner and the audience surround the barn sized room in two rows of seats.The high brow characters fill this room with angst and woe and we with laughter. A daisy-chain of one way love and misfired ambition signals unhappiness as Medvedenko (John Cronin) loves Masha (Dee Roycroft), Masha loves Konstantin (Damien Hasson), Konstantin loves Nina (Charlie Murphy) and Nina loves Trigorin (Jonathan Byrne), as does the fading actress Arkadina (Caitríona Ní Mhurchú). The local doctor, Dorn (Simon Coury), is in on it too, having an affair with the farm manager's wife, Pollina (Noelle Brown). Put all these brittle folk into a country mansion for a few weekends and watch them descend at every turn. Earnest young writer Konstantin can't find his place in life, despite his pure intentions. When he puts on a play for his famous mother Arkadina and friends, she laughs at it dismissively. His celeb obsessed girlfriend Nina runs away with famous writer Trigorin to become an actress, carving out her own personal tragedy. Konstantin finds some critical success, but let me tell you, things just don't get better for him or many of the other characters, like brooding Masha walking around in her Hamlet black and ending up marrying the wrong man. But why is this funny? It's funny because these people mock mankind's soaring ambitions. Those things that we hold high, like art and love are channeled through ridiculous, irresponsible creatures who largely come to a bad end. Chekhov gives us the two fingers to all our high minded values. The characters don't really do anything, they just drink, dawdle and suffer. Anything of significance happens offstage which is a clever device of Chekhov's anything that matters isn't really there a wry comment on art and society. Key to making this ensemble work is the calibre of acting. A single weak link can sink the show. We are saved by a superb cast. Ms. Ní Mhurchú's vain and self-obsessed Arkadina is a memorable diva, pulsating with life and emotion. Even when cruel we root for her. Expertly balancing despair with a truthful inner search and yearning for love is Mr. Hasson, whose polemical Konstantin wears his heart on his sleeve with doleful ambiguity. The off-kilter relationship he creates with his mother is both credible and moving. Karl Quinn's Sorin is masterful. His speech drifts over drumlins with a languid gentleness evoking a previous life of missed pinnacles. The less demonstrative, but important characters, who stand somewhere outside the inner sanctum are intruders of irksome reality. Ms. Brown plays Pollina with a nervous expectation, telegraphing the disaster ahead and Mr. Cronin's level spoken Medvedenko is finely immutable.But if you've seen The Seagull before then you're probably puzzled how Jason Byrne's Anatomy of a Seagull differs from Chekhov's. I was looking forward to seeing what interesting things he would do with the original. With a new title, and the qualifier 'Directed & Adapted by Jayson Byrne, after Chekhov', I was imagining a different focus or interpretation of pivotal events such as when Konstantin lays the dead seagull in front of Nina. Perhaps the setting would have new characters, a sci-fi Ireland of 2099 or a fictional Dublanistan - something. No joy. After watching both, a synopsis of the two plays would yield about the same result from two different sets of eyes. A couple of insignificant characters are chopped (Ilia, Jacob, the cook and servant), there are some minor changes, and the language is altered somewhat but that's it. The changes neither detract nor add, leaving us with 'The Seagull as slightly altered here and there by Jayson Byrne'. An example of a minor change is when he lets Dorn read out the actual book in Act II as opposed to having it just rest on his lap. For the most part though, he 'naturalises' the language making the text seem less formal. Here's an example from when the elder Dorn tries to comfort the young playwright Konstantin. First from my text:Dorn: You chose your subject in the realm of abstract thought and you did and quite right. Now from Mr. Byrne:Dorn: What you did; an abstract idea and you gave it form.You would think that Mr. Byrne has a good ear for dialogue because his language is tighter, more lively. It delivers Dorn's thought with integrity and urgency rather than stunted with a veiled intellectual observation. Yes, it is a good ear and Dorn has a slightly different personalisation but no more. You can't even say that Chekhov's is better than Mr. Byrne's or vice versa they're the same play. It's not 'After Chekhov' - it is Chekhov. It's not a new translation, it's not a new anything except the title and this and that. The new title implies a unique reworking by Mr. Byrne which he hasn't done. For Mr. Byrne to claim title to a version of Chekhov's masterpiece by virtue of some tinkering is like someone saying 'Yeah, I wrote Homlet, it's about this Prince whose father was killed by his Uncle. No, it's Homlet, not Hamlet. Pay me'. If he were alive, Chekhov would storm down to Smock Alley and box some ears.Still, this is a great production with Broadway worthy acting. Go see it.
