Festival review: (seagull), The Studio
When the sound of a gun going off pierces the air in this remarkable new interpretation of Anton Chekhov’s moving treatise on life, love and art, however expected it might be, the noise it makes comes as something of a shock. Up until that point, and for all but a few seconds of what follows, not a word has been said out loud, although communication between the eight-strong ensemble on stage has been as impassioned as the play demands.
For 99 per cent of Stijn Van Opstal’s production for the Antwerp-based Olympique Dramatique, the actors have been talking using Flemish sign language, while translations of what they are saying appears on increasingly playful surtitles. With the audience sat either side of a gloriously ramshackle makeshift stage by designer Damiaan De Schrijver with Van Opstal, the exchanges between Yana Wuytjens’ would-be writer and his equally would-be lover Nina, played by Yousra Boukantar become those of adolescents playing at trying to be grown-ups. This is perhaps something they picked up off Konstantin’s actress mother Arkadina, played by Sofie Decleir, although Serge Vlerick’s actual writer Trigorin casts a literary spell over them all.
As those on stage rage, against each other and the world beyond throughout the production’s interval-free two and a half hours, their demonstrative actions at points possess a physical largesse that resembles a hybrid of silent movies and full-on mime. When Lobke Leirens’ Masja speaks out loud late in the play, it comes as a shock.
With sign language seemingly the norm here, it also raises the question of how, with so many writers and actors gathered, such disciplines work. Rather than dwell on this, one should lose oneself into the silence, with the only other noise coming from the occasional impressionistic piano.
All of which requires maximum concentration, both from the audience and actors to understand the full intent of their exchanges beyond words. The effect is one of slow-burning devastation that brings Chekov’s play to life with a powerful new layer of meaning.
Until 11 August
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