Word: arkadina
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Sorin, exaggerates his senility too much to be effective. Scott Munerbrook, as the successful writer Trigorin, on the other hand, looks and acts too young for the part. There were, however, two fine performances, by John Archibald as Doctor Dorn, and Anne Garrels as the aging but beautiful actress Arkadina. Both are completely right for their roles, in looks, movement, and tone of voice...
...corpulent with sensitivity. He is incapable of both love and brutality, the romantic gestures of pity and hatred. He is wildly popular, and decently agonized about it. He is closed off to the turmoil of the dilating implications of things, a receptivity which may be inspirational or insinuative. Arkadina is steady and caustic, overbearing in her rationality, but qualified by patronization. Perhaps she senses that the people around are children, but she is unable to go beyond that. Sorin, oar and infirm, feels he has lost out on life and is probably right. He hates to be contradicted by Yevgheniy...
...SEAGULL reaches its climax with Arkadina's line to Trigorin, "I'm the only who knows the truth about you." But the candor of detached analysis is only more sophisticated romantic illusion. Self-revelation is a mist of uncynical dream and deception. And this leads to the main reason why the audience feels depressed rather than exhilarated by a Chekhov comedy. The audience can rarely indulge in detached laughter at the characters' expense, because there is no comic spectacle of abstracted human follies on stage, only a concentration of suggestions and perceptions of errors which the audience understand no more...