Spring Break
Szász's 'Seagull': artful adaptation or a study in self-indulgence?
by Allison Vanouse
Arts | 2/3/09
Posted online at 11:55 PM EST on 2/2/09
/ Last updated at 4:51 AM EST on 2/2/09
In its mission statement, the American Repertory Theatre describes itself as a "vital cultural resource" for its community. But, the role of any cultural resource, as Brandeis is beginning to understand, must be battled for, as it cannot merely be proclaimed. So ART's mission, much like that of any public arts institution with ambitious scope, involves a constant struggle for relevance among the very community it hopes to serve. As the more traditional theatergoing community (wealthy, white and venerably aged) becomes busier and busier with kicking their own buckets, this has meant a deeper focus on the young, the trendy-and the typically-uninterested-in-plays.
It means, in other words, that they are marketing to us.
This newfound ploy is both unexpected and unavoidable upon entering ART's Loeb Drama Center. The Brattle Street Theater maintains a veneer of cultured worldliness in leather and glass, but its publicity banners look like indie album covers. The staff is consciously hip and wants to pointedly ask where you bought your skinny jeans. One is inundated with a newly printed scheme of posters, shouting in block text that this is "NOT YOUR PARENTS' THEATER."
Which, indeed, it isn't. The ART's recent production of Anton Chekhov's masterpiece The Seagull, will not be accused of pandering to anyone's outdated mores nor of leaving any aging subscribers snoring -for one thing, the Guns 'n' Roses music blared into the audience tends to ward off sleepiness. Director János Szász introduces his audiences to a Chekhov who rips himself free of the preciousness of historicized staging, eschewing samovars and high collars for a gritty and surreal David Lynch atmosphere. Here, crumbling, frescoed ceilings leak rain onto the stage, fading velour seats are swung out of their rows into crazy diagonals, and skinny girls careen in five-inch heels through standing water and cigarette smoke. Szász has exploded the bourgeois sitting rooms of classical Chekhov staging for his production, leaving both the stage and characters constantly exposed. "Sometimes," Szász writes in his program notes, "Chekhov is like the Greeks- so much happens offstage and between the acts. We're trying to make everything visible and immediate in this production. We're trying to put everything on the table-the lies, the affairs, the betrayals, the shame, the compromises, the sex and the passion."
It means, in other words, that they are marketing to us.
This newfound ploy is both unexpected and unavoidable upon entering ART's Loeb Drama Center. The Brattle Street Theater maintains a veneer of cultured worldliness in leather and glass, but its publicity banners look like indie album covers. The staff is consciously hip and wants to pointedly ask where you bought your skinny jeans. One is inundated with a newly printed scheme of posters, shouting in block text that this is "NOT YOUR PARENTS' THEATER."
Which, indeed, it isn't. The ART's recent production of Anton Chekhov's masterpiece The Seagull, will not be accused of pandering to anyone's outdated mores nor of leaving any aging subscribers snoring -for one thing, the Guns 'n' Roses music blared into the audience tends to ward off sleepiness. Director János Szász introduces his audiences to a Chekhov who rips himself free of the preciousness of historicized staging, eschewing samovars and high collars for a gritty and surreal David Lynch atmosphere. Here, crumbling, frescoed ceilings leak rain onto the stage, fading velour seats are swung out of their rows into crazy diagonals, and skinny girls careen in five-inch heels through standing water and cigarette smoke. Szász has exploded the bourgeois sitting rooms of classical Chekhov staging for his production, leaving both the stage and characters constantly exposed. "Sometimes," Szász writes in his program notes, "Chekhov is like the Greeks- so much happens offstage and between the acts. We're trying to make everything visible and immediate in this production. We're trying to put everything on the table-the lies, the affairs, the betrayals, the shame, the compromises, the sex and the passion."
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