Theatre in Review: The Notebook of Trigorin (Attic Theatre Company/Flea Theatre)

	Will Sarratt and Meredith Firenze. Photo: Julia Moulin-Nerat

Two very different dramatic sensibilities coexist uneasily in The Notebook of Trigorin. Tennessee Williams was on the record as revering Anton Chekhov, but it's not entirely clear what he thought he could bring to this new version of The Seagull, a quixotic project given Chekhov's abhorrence of melodrama and Williams' taste for the violent and sensational. Then again, since The Notebook of Trigorin dates from around 1980, when Williams had spent a decade and a half turning out one bizarre, often incomprehensible work after another, it is at the very least a pleasure to find him writing so clearly once again.

This may be because The Notebook of Trigorin is based on a standard, well-regarded 1960 translation of The Seagull by Ann Dunnigan. I can't say for certain how much Williams brought to the text; to my ears, only a few lines here and there sounded the distinctive notes of his voice. At its best, this is a lean, lucid, highly playable version of what it is arguably Chekhov's greatest play, marred by a couple of dubious additions.

As the new title suggests, the focus is fixed on Trigorin, the writer and companion of Arkadina, the vain, aging actress who is the center of the little community imaged by Chekhov. (It is probably unsurprising that Williams, who was never far from his typewriter even in his worst moments, would identify with Trigorin, who is obsessed with his writing at the expense of everything else in his life.) Nothing stops him from working, even the galling knowledge that he is probably a second-rater compared to such greats of the previous generation as Turgenev and Tolstoy. Relationships are of secondary importance; his affair with Arkadina is one of tolerance rather than of passion; and the liaison he enters into with the naïve, stagestruck Nina is a throwaway amusement that quickly palls, no matter that it leaves her a broken woman. Chekhov shows this by having him pause in the middle of intimate conversations to write down a stray thought or image that he can use in a story.

In Williams' version, however, Trigorin is bisexual; there are hints of this scattered through the text -- and for a very brief second, I thought he might be interested in Konstantin (here spelled Constantine), Arkadina's tormented son -- but the big revelation occurs when Arkadina confronts Trigorin with the photo of a young boy he seduced on a trip to Italy. He admits that this is his regular practice when traveling with Arkadina and when, at her country estate, he takes moonlight swims with one of the serfs. This is an interesting idea -- and it leads to a neatly done scene in which Arkadina more or less blackmails Trigorin into staying with her -- but a change this major seems to point toward a more complete rethinking of The Seagull, something that doesn't happen here. At the very least, such a revelation makes his seduction of Nina less credible, but apparently Williams' Trigorin needs women for admiration and men for sex, and that is that.

Even odder is Williams' decision to rework Chekhov's sublime ending, in which Constantine shoots himself offstage while Arkadina, Trigorin, and the others are playing bingo: Dorn, the local doctor, gets Trigorin's attention, informing him what has happened and urging him to get Arkadina out of the house. Instead, Williams has Dorn ask Arkadina to display her technique at making a curtain call as Constantine's body is carried on stage; Arkadina shudders in horror, then takes a grand bow before her dead son. Chekhov's ending is a brilliant piece of understatement; Williams' is a vulgar piece of melodrama.

Anyway, fans of Chekhov and/or Williams won't want to miss the opportunity to see this rarely staged work, and Laura Braza's well-paced and intelligent direction makes it easy to sit through. Charise Greene's Arkadina is a little hard to take at first -- she is strident and demanding in a way that I haven't seen since Tyne Daly tackled the role a couple of decades ago -- but she is not unsympathetic, especially in the final act, when we see how fearful Arkadina is of advancing age and her diminishing career. Michael Schantz's Trigorin is believably passive in the face of other people's passions, as long as it doesn't interfere with his work; he has a real chemistry with Meredith Forlenza's Nina, which goes a long way toward explaining their alliance. Forlenza makes something touching out of Nina's final appearance, haunted by heartbreak, career failure, and the death of a child. Will Sarratt's Constantine similarly matures from a frustrated youth into an accomplished, but self-destructive, writer. Jeremy Lawrence, who has enjoyed a side career playing Tennessee Williams in one-man shows, brings a touch of that characterization to Sorin, Arkadina's elderly, frail brother.

The set design, by Julia Noulin-Meurat, keeps the furniture and props to a minimum, creating a rustic Russian atmosphere by covering the walls of the theatre with lovely pastoral murals. (Smaller versions of these paintings are placed on the floor.) Michael Krass' costumes are a slightly odd mix of period and modern styles, although he provides Akardina -- who is, after all, a clotheshorse -- with some nicely detailed outfits. Libby Jensen's lighting includes some pleasing color treatments on the theatre's upstage windows.

If The Notebook of Trigorin is little more than a curio, it is one that is well worth seeing at least once, and we should be grateful to the Attic Theatre Company for giving it a fair presentation. Even so, its most important lesson is that one great playwright should leave another alone.--David Barbour