CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THE THEATRE
'The seagull. By Anton Tchekov. (St. James's.)
Miss IRENE HENTSCIIEL'S production (now transferred from ersmith to the West End) has upon this admirable play a furiously unflattering effect. Her approach is straightforward ; there s no pandering to the wayward Slav genius ; she might almost have 7,e
en producing Pinero. One result is to confer on the characters sort of solidity which does not in all cases become them. Their uirks and inconscquences seem, though intriguing, slightly out of lace, like truffles in Yorkshire pudding ; and we are perhaps more ware than we should be of their creator's mind expressing itself through than rather than in them. How obsessed he seems to be !With the relations between art and life! Trigorin, whose facile talents as a novelist win him a popularity which he knows to be Icheap and yet tirelessly pursues, and who cannot help seeing all life as the raw material for second-rate literature ; Nina, the rich young girl who supposes fame to be in itself a form of bliss and runs away ko seek it, unsuccessfully, upon the stage ; Madame Arkadina, strenu- ously pretending that the autumn of her career as an actress is still high summer ; and Treplef, her son, a young idealist making his Just raw ventures into literature despite his mother's jealous intolerance and the burden of a breaking heart—all these examine problems which we feel to have been in some form, at some stage, personal to Tchckov ; and, because the characters at the St. James's do not come fully alive and carry us away with them into the world which Tchekov's mind projected, we find ourselves watching the workings of that mind when we ought, I think, to be wholly subdued by what it created.
The cast is a strong one. Miss Mai Zetterling plays Nina with a passion and intensity which just fall short of brilliance, Miss Isabel Jeans draws a firm and engaging but rather conventional portrait of Madame Arkadina, and Mr. Ian Hunter does very much the same for Trigorin. Mr. Nicholas Hannen, Mr. Philip Stainton and Miss Hazel Terry provide highly effective support ; but I thought that Mr. Paul Scofield's Treplef was the best performance in an evening which, though not wholly satisfying, was always full of interest.
PETER FLEMING.
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