Mar 21, 2008

Production overcomes script

By John Angell Grant / Theater Reviewer

The real artist digs through pain to find meaning in this grim madness that we call life. That theme attracted playwrights Anton Chekhov and Tennessee Williams, and each dealt with it in his own way.

Three years before his death in 1983, Williams tried to merge the two writers' visions. He adapted his favorite play, Chekhov's "The Seagull," and retitled it "The Notebook of Trigorin."

The result was a problematical and rarely performed piece that is difficult to stage, so kudos to Foster City's Hillbarn Theatre for taking a shot at it, and coming up with a success. This is not an easy undertaking.

Chekhov is notorious for writing plays with little or no plot. In "Seagull/Trigorin," a motley ragtag of life's wayfarers loiter moodily in the garden of a large Russian estate overlooking a lake, and philosophize about the meaning of life and art.

Typical of Chekhov, this is an estate at the end of the 19th century that fears the decline of its own identity.

What little plot there is gets triggered in the opening scene by a famous Russian actress who unsympathetically mocks her budding playwright son when he attempts to produce a wordy and abstract play on a makeshift stage overlooking the lake.

Otherwise, the various neighbors and family members sigh from personal boredom, and make eloquent philosophical observations about the meaning of life. There's some romantic hanky-panky on the side. Someone has a gun.

Director Dave Sikula has done an excellent job getting a range of distinctive and striking performances from his Foster City cast of community actors. They create a rainbow of varied characters.

There is a touching and amusing scene early on between an earnest, love-struck schoolteacher (Adam Simpson) and the angry woman (Wanda Reimer) he adores. Larry Rekow is wonderful as a cynical doctor, calmly and narcissistically philandering his way through female acquaintances.

Randy Hurst is charismatic as the successful, mediocre writer Trigorin, filled with self-doubt about the value of his life. Trapped in a conjugal devil's pact with the estate's grande dame, Trigorin sleeps with boys on the side. That homosexual story element is an addition to the script by Williams.

As for the actress and mother to the young playwright, Williams has made Chekhov's original angrier. In this production, Bobbi Fagone plays her more mean than lost, and ratchets up the level of anger almost to the edge of buffoonery.

Mathew Ingle is effective as her confused and obsessive son.

"Trigorin" was written in 1980 in the last three years of Williams' life, when his best period as a dramatist was behind him. It is the work of a still unsettled man, alcoholic and addicted, restlessly looking back on his life.

There is a mean-spiritedness in the Williams rewrite that is not in the original play. It's most noticeable in the characters of the actress mother and the doctor.

By changing these characters, Williams has torn the fragile fabric of Chekhov's bored and ailing world of privilege. This is the main problem with "The Notebook of Trigorin."

As a result, "Trigorin" has a hard time finding a way to resolve itself. Williams drops into the script extra plot points (writerly success, baby adoption, American step parents).

He also drops in Freudian psychological motivations (closet homosexuality). These additions jump-start the story in places for a moment, but for Chekhov it's never really about the story.

Chekhov and Williams work at cross-purposes at times. These story changes also make less credible the all-important character of Nina (the radiant Loring Williams), a young actress with dreams of artistry, who pursues a bad love match.

Having said all that, "Notebook of Trigorin" is nonetheless a fascinating literary hodge-podge, as Williams attempts to overlay the 19th century Russian world of Anton Chekhov's with a darker, more psychopathological Americanized gloss. If you're a fan of modern theater, this is definitely worth a visit.

Rating: Three stars

E-mail John Angell Grant at jagplays@yahoo.com.