Were Critics Impressed by Ian Rickson's Starry Royal Court Seagull?
Mackenzie Crook and
Kristin Scott Thomas
in The Seagull
|
Ian Rickson, artistic director of the Royal Court since 1998, has signed off from the post (and the theatre’s 50th anniversary celebrations) by staging a new production of Anton Chekhov’s
The Seagull, in a new version by Christopher Hampton. Did critics bid him a fond farewell?
Here’s a sampling of what they had to say:
Mark Shenton in his Theatre.com Review: “The Royal Court ends its 50th anniversary celebrations—and Ian Rickson’s nearly decade-long tenure as artistic director—with The Seagull. It is the ultimate play about the ecstasies and agonies of new writing, the constantly elusive search for new forms within the theatre and the conflicts between the drive for celebrity and glamour and the drive to make good art... Though Rickson—like Mackenzie Crook’s troubled, gaunt Konstantin—has been stalked by some failures of nerve and verve during his time at the helm of the Court, he has always kept faith with the writers that are at the heart of this theatre’s mission. “The theatre’s on its last legs,” claims one character here. “Once upon a time there were mighty oaks, now all you see is tree stumps”. But though this is unquestionably a mighty oak of a play, Rickson’s Court has also planted many acorns in the firmament of British theatre… And, as another character replies to the earlier assertion, “It’s true there may be fewer genuinely brilliant individuals these days; but the general standard of acting is far higher.” Rickson’s pitch-perfect production, which may indeed turn out to be a vintage one. After the decidedly mixed blessings of Katie Mitchell’s impressionistic National Theatre staging last summer, and with another yet to come that will star Ian McKellen at Stratford-upon-Avon, this utterly naturalistic, fully inhabited production pulls off the rare feat of beating to the pulse of real, authentic life. Chekhov brings the anguish of life on Sorin’s dull country estate to beautiful life, and it is keenly articulated by a cast that are thrillingly alive to every nuance and echo of the past and present that they live in. Kristin Scott Thomas’ imperious Arkadina is impervious to the careless hurt she is inflicting on her son Konstantin. Peter Wight, as her slowly dying brother Sorin, faints clean away at one moment and in another is thought to have passed over before he eventually begins breathing again. It’s these kinds of beautifully held moments that keep Rickson’s production constantly animated.”
Benedict Nightingale of The London Times: “Ian Rickson has assembled a surprising company for what seems an equally odd choice as his farewell production as Court artistic director. After all, Kristin Scott Thomas, Mackenzie Crook, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Art Malik have all consolidated their careers on screens large and small. And isn't the Court ‘the national theatre of new writing’?… There's no opportunistic casting here, least of all from Scott Thomas, whose performance as the diva, Arkadina, combines elegance and charisma with a narcissism as selfish as it's serene. And, as directed by Rickson, The Seagull is as fresh as any modern play dealing with the emptiness of fame and the nature of creative art….Altogether, a fine, subtle revival.”
Mackenzie Crook and Carey Mulligan
in The Seagull
|
Michael Billington of The Guardian: “Ian Rickson ends his tenure at the Royal Court with a familiar masterpiece. But, while some might think it a conservative choice, it is an unusually apt one since Chekhov's play deals obsessively with new writing. And, after the recent travesty at the National, it is heartening to find a richly textured production that respect its author's intentions. Christopher Hampton's new version is also sharp, fresh and comic… But, if one timely theme leaps out of Hampton's version, it is the hollowness of celebrity. As the actress Nina tells Konstantin in the final act ‘in our work what's important isn't fame or glamour, it's the ability to endure.’ The irony is that this is one gift Konstantin doesn't possess. Significantly, one of the delights of Rickson's production is that it is not necessarily the most famous names that come off best. Katherine Parkinson's brilliant Masha signals her hopeless passion for Konstantin from the start. Pearce Quigley's bumbling, awkward schoolteacher reveals his own role in this daisy-chain of unrequited love by ardently tracing Masha's every move. And both Peter Wight as the unfulfilled Sorin and Paul Jesson as his stage-struck estate manager have the emotional and physical weight one associates with the Moscow Art Theatre in its heyday… This is a fine production that brings out Chekhov's obsession with misdirected passion and the vanity of fame and ensures Rickson leaves the Court on a high note.”
Charles Spencer of The Daily Telegraph: “The Seagull is Ian Rickson’s swansong at the Royal Court and one might say that nothing in his directorship became him like the leaving it. As I have written, perhaps too often, Rickson lacked the razzle-dazzle of his predecessor, Stephen Daldry, who seemed to discover an important new dramatist almost every other week, and too much second-rate work has been allowed to reach the stage of Britain’s premier theatre for new writing in recent years. But in allowing himself to direct a couple of classics at the end of his regime—firstly a magnificent Krapp’s Last Tape starring Harold Pinter, and now this tremendous production of Chekhov’s Seagull, Rickson reminds us of what a superb play director he is. He may not be a natural leader or a great impresario, but when it comes to the detailed direction of a masterpiece, he can stand comparison with the best… Even the smallest roles are played with freshness, while the leading actors bring an extraordinary depth to their performances. Kristin Scott Thomas nails the vanity of the actress Arkadina, and it is hilarious to watch her patronising any female who happens to be younger than she is…. There isn’t a single weak link in a show that must surely be West End bound.”
Paul Taylor of
The Independent: “After eight years as its artistic director, Ian Rick-son signs off at the Royal Court with this fine, valedictory production of
The Seagull. In some respects, it’s a strange choice of play for a swansong. During his regime, he abandoned the policy of counter-pointing new work with classic revivals. Indeed, this is the first classic costume drama that Rickson has ever directed. Seen in another light, though, it makes for a rather apt finale. Konstantin, Chekhov’s aspiring, young writer, is fired, at the start, by a Royal Court-like mission. He wants to usher in the Theatre of the Future, and he finds, as more than a few dramatists have done in Sloane Square, that the public are by no means ready for it—just as the audience was unprepared for the innovations in
The Seagull itself, when it was premiered in St. Petersburg. So the evening has various, intriguing layers of self-reference… As the leading lady in more senses than one, Kristin Scott Thomas is a magnificent, haughty, and impatient Arkadina: she’s a mistress of the brilliantly timed put-down who gives Nina the fatal advice to become an actress out of the sheer unthinking negligence of seasoned self-absorption. It’s a wonderfully nimble and funny performance, darkening into black farce as she demonstrates the ignominious desperateness of her need for Trigorin.”
Nicholas de Jongh of The Evening Standard: “Ian Rickson strikes a cheeky note by signing off his career as artistic director of this home for new writing with that familiar classic Chekhov's The Seagull—but in a historic production. The play's two young sexual obsessives, Mackenzie Crook's suicidal writer Konstantin and Carey Mulligan's doomed, would-be actress Nina, make their characters' despair overwhelming. It felt, while I watched with tell-tale moist eyes, that I was seeing this tragi-comedy for the first time. And Christopher Hampton's new version, with its stock of fresh-minted turns of phrase, enhances the sense of watching something new… Oddly [Kristin] Scott Thomas's limitations serve only to make Crook's Konstantin appear more pathetically isolated and his transition from TV comedian to serious actor more amazing. What a blaze of desperate intensity he brings to his hopeless wooing of Mulligan's ardent, vulnerable Nina. Eyes fixed in a distant stare, shimmering with passion, the desolate, bearded Konstantin promises early on to kill himself and the threat for once sounds like an assured prophecy. I have never seen the last Nina-Konstantin encounter better done. Mulligan piles on the pathos as an eerily mature, sexually obsessed Nina. She speaks the lines from Konstantin's modernist play while he blocks his ears to the sound. This enthralling Seagull becomes, in Rickson's beautiful swan-song production, a drama of destruction. It demonstrates how two narcissistic artist/lovers, teeming with self-interest wreck the lives of their younger counter-parts.”
Patrick Marmion of The Daily Mail: “Overall, Rickson can only be proud of his cast singing him on his way. But they don’t always flock together and, absorbing though they are to watch individually, the play isn’t quite the moving valediction it might have been.”
Paul Callan of The Daily Express: “Chekhov explores, with keen finesse, the melancholic side of the human condition… Mackenzie Crook, as the doomed and unsuccessful playwright Konstantin is helplessly in love with Nina, played so delicately by Carey Mulligan. He is best known to the public as the puerile Gareth Keene in the TV hit
The Office and as the gurning buccaneer standing near Johnny Depp in Pirates Of The Caribbean. But he has the right gloomy and drawn appearance for the role and imbues the part with tortured emotion. He makes his anguish work and it consumes him—along with his desperate, unrequited love. Mr. Crook was brave to take on such a demanding and complicated role, but last night he carried it off with depth and shattering darkness. In this new version, translator Christopher Hampton has a cast to die for. Apart from the cadaverous Mr. Crook, there is Art Malik as the bored and laid back Dr. Dorn who shines by simply being languid. But it is Kristin Scott Thomas, as the age-conscious Arkadina, who produces a memorable performance. She often delivers her lines with a brilliant comic timing, and there is a splendid brittleness about her stage presence. In the love scene with Tregorin, she makes the stage pulsate with wickedness and an edgy flirtation. Tregorin is played quite outstandingly by Chiwetel Ejiofor who conveys the utter indolence of the character. It is a tribute to his skills that ethnicity never arises.”