Soaring Seagull

I spent the early afternoon at The Esplanade enjoying Chekov's The Seagull as performed by a touring company from The RSC. (Sadly I wasn't able to attend the same company's King Lear, with Ian McKellen in the title role, which is playing in tandem with the Chekov, due to pressure of work.) The excellent William Gaunt played Sorin for this matinee performance instead of McKellen, which is probably why I was able to get a ticket relatively late. The even better news was that I found myself upgraded from my seat in the far circle to an excellent, centrally located, seat in the stalls. And the best news of all was that it was, as I expected, a uniformly excellent performance: a showcase of excellent acting which remained true to the spirit of the play in every respect. The last act was suitably sombre, and beautifully prepared for with an impressively dramatic attempted suicide by Treplev on-stage at the end of Act 2. Somehow this made the low-key off-stage ending work even better. All the self-referential theatrical stuff came to life, as it usually does in RSC productions. My only complaint about the whole experience was that the air-conditioning in the theatre worked rather too well and I was glad to get out into the warmth of the late afternoon after the show.

I arrived at The Esplanade fairly early in order to make sure I could easily pick up the ticket I'd booked on-line, so I had a bit of time to visit the branch of the National Library there. Essentially this is a performing arts library, and very good it is too. They have a substantial collection of plays and this alone set me thinking I need to go there more often.

Last point: I was struck by how utterly modern Chekov's characters seem in their relentless, and often comical, brooding on life. I suppose people have been given to such navel-gazing in all ages, but Chekov developed the art to put this on stage so we can see ourselves doing it. I certainly spent no small part of the afternoon uneasily recognising myself.