Word: gull
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...Gull (by Anton Chekhov) is a landmark in the modern theater: in this first of his major plays, Chekhov began to master his highly individual method and spoke in his endlessly imitated, ever inimitable tones. Even in the Phoenix Theater's disappointing revival, The Sea Gull could still be seen as a theatrical turning point- though, after 50-odd years, what it turned away from was as palpable as what it turned toward...
...Gull is not yet fully Chekhovian, not of the quality of Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard. Already-and quite wonderfully in places-it has Chekhov's fragrance, incisiveness, poignancy; It has dialogue that, if seemingly scrappy and elliptical, constitutes a marvelous sort of notation. Already, Chekhov can convey the apartness and aloneness of people; already, too, he can be about equally compassionate and merciless, not so much acquitting his characters as pardoning them...
...play also dragged a good deal out of 19th-century fiction after it. Neurotic young Kostya Triplev wears the musty mantle of European Weltschmerz and Wertherism, and the sea gull, Nina, seems a period heroine who breaks romantically with conventional life, is "ruined" by an interesting older man and exhibits emotions not so much false as several sizes too large for her. Having imported romantic melancholy, Chekhov-being Chekhov-could only in some degree mock its posturings; The Sea Gull remains an uneasy mixture of satire and sentiment rather than a true fusion of the comic and tragic...
...play, with its writers and actors, has to do with temperament and ego and vanity, and again with irresponsibility and self-indulgence, disappointment and regret-with the minor-key emotions of which Chekhov was already a master. For Chekhov did find himself in The Sea Gull, while still owing much to others: he is actually inferior in it to the precise degree that he is indebted...
...made in the U.S. was off the production line. It was the 12,571st Corsair, a descendant of the planes once flown from Guadalcanal to the Inland Sea by such hot pilots as Marine "Pappy" Boyington and the Navy's "Ike" Kepford. Corsairs, with their inverted gull wings, were the first fighters to exceed 400 m.p.h.; during World War II they splashed a total of 2,140 enemy aircraft, v. a Corsair loss of but 189. With its Corsair mission completed, Chance Vought will now concentrate most of its production on the jet-powered F-7U Cutlass, a Navy...