Word: chekhovisms
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...Gull (by Anton Chekhov; produced by The Theatre Guild Inc.). One of the things important actors can do is to get a hearing for important plays. When Chekhov's Sea Gull was revived last week with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in the cast, it instantly became news as well...
...Chekhov's best play, The Sea Gull ranks well below his incomparable Cherry Orchard, his moving Three Sisters. The people it treats of are fibreless, end-stopped artistic folk. Self-pitying, middle-aged Actress Irina (Lynn Fontanne) shrugs, screams, clutches tight the second-rate novelist, Trigorin (Alfred Lunt). Irina's son Constantine (Richard Whorf) writes advanced plays, loves the ingenuous, stage-struck Nina (Uta Hagen), who in turn idolizes Trigorin. Nina is the sea gull- the fluttering bird whom Trigorin ruins out of thoughtless pleasure, condemning her to the life of a third-rate actress, driving Constantine...
...artistic temperament, reflects the conflict between two incompatible generations. It exposes Trigorin's rueful egotism: "On my tombstone," says Trigorin, "they will say: Here lies Trigorin, who was a good writer, but not so good a one as Turgenev." It exposes Nina's swimming-eyed romanticism. Chekhov suggested, though Actor Lunt has not heeded him, that Trigorin should not be dapper or handsome, should wear torn shoes. Chekhov's point was subtle: to a girl like Nina, the more down-at-the-heel Trigorin is, the more exciting he will seem...
Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne have abandoned "Amphitryon," and come to Boston to fill roles, not subordinate but also not outstanding, in Anton Chekhov's "The Sea Gull." An odd assortment of characters, splendidly delineated, are mixed together, and allowed to react. The plot is thus simply a series of their chance encounters and repulsions, and seems devoid of design. The characters are all more or less frustrated, and the events produced out of them are all gloomy. But the play, though discursive and depressing, is packed with incidental dramatic values of great force, and contains several large chunks...
...SHORT STORIES OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD-Knopf ($3.50). All the finished (73) and unfinished (15) stories of the Australian-born writer who has been compared to Russia's Chekhov, now for the first time collected in one volume; with an introduction by her relict, John Middleton Murry...