Chela De Ferrari’s “The Seagull”: Theatre, Identity and Unrequited Love

Peruvian director Chela De Ferrari of Lima’s Teatro La Plaza, reconfigured Hamlet — seen at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival — through the eyes of actors with Down’s Syndrome. The actors reworked the play through their own lived experience to pose a series of questions about the canon, belonging and cultural ownership. The production was hugely uplifting and celebratory – a reimagining of a canonical play realised with humour, wit and a willingness to address issues about representation and agency in both theatre and life.

For her new staging of The Seagull, which opened at the Avignon Festival in July, De Ferrari dismantles the play much as she did with Hamlet. The production, produced by Madrid’s Centro Dramático Nacional, is a jazz riff on Chekhov’s 1895 play, written by Luis Alberto León and Melanie Werder. It opens on a set replete with sofa and armchairs, a worn carpet, screen, desk and chair that conjures a particular Chekhovian world. Russian violin music plays gently in the background. De Ferrari and her creative team then takes the piece in a very different direction. Stage manager Alicia (Macarena Sanz) come on to strike down the set and leave a bare stage. These opening moments, as Alicia with headphones and script addresses the audience, signal that this is no conventional staging of The Seagull. She audio describes the audience to a company made up primarily of blind and visually impaired actors – eliciting laughter from the audience at her observation that she can’t see anyone asleep yet.

This is a production that recentres both the play and the cast. Domingo López’s earnest Semyon emerges from the audience, rising to his feet to address Patty Bonet’s gothic Mascha. Mascha frowns and looks down at him, literally, seated a few rows behind him. At one point, Eduart Mediterrani’s Konstantin speaks of directing making visible the invisible – a line that Alicia has already used in defining what she does in her opening address to the audience. Alicia’s visibility serves to give form to the labour of making work, that which is often not seen or erased. Her work, following the script, guiding the actors, collaborating with the onstage musician, captures the messiness of theatre, the sense of theatre as a process of fumbling and finding one’s way, of looking and learning, of taking care of those performing.

Alessio Meloni’s clean set is dominated by a back wall screen where Emilio Valenzuela’s projections of the lake at the summer house capture a sense of an isolated world; the lake becomes increasingly decomposed as the production progresses. A desk stage right houses Nacho Bilbao, the musician who creates a live online score for the action, a script of sorts for the actors who rely on sound to orientate themselves; a stage manager’s desk stage left allows Alicia to follow the action and intervene as necessary. Anna Tussel’s costumes have a decidedly contemporary feel, especially in Act 4.

Belén González del Almo’s Nina performs in Konstantin’s play. Photo: Bárbara Sánchez Palomero, courtesy of the Centro Dramático Nacional

Konstantin’s play is an intense symbolist affair filled with fire and fury. Belén González del Amo’s Nina appears in a tunic with ritualistic overtones and a giant eye headdress. Lola Robles’s Arkadina, watches with the audience on the raked seating. She intervenes to undermine her son’s theatrical endeavours. Rattled and agitated he paces and stomps, departing in anger at his mother’s disruptive comments. Meditterani’s Konstantin is a volatile being from the very opening; restless in anticipating Nina’s arrival, agitated as he prepared Nina for her appearance and furious at his mother’s lack of support; the star-struck Nina is flattered by Arkadina’s narrow praise and the presence of the lofty Boris Trigorin.

Act 2 sees the group gathered at Arkadina’s estate lying on the ground enjoying the view and the weather– a brief moment of togetherness before the relationships fall apart. Agus Ruiz’s Boris Trigorin — one of only two fully sighted actors in the production — is shown to abuse his position of privilege as Arkadina’s lover by attending to the admiring questions made by teenage fan Nina. She may be compared to the seagull in the play, but it is a fluttering butterfly that her delicate steps recall. As she moves across the stage, it is as if she is feeling her way with tiny steps; her tulle skirt and white t-shirt accentuate her youth; the sunglasses she sports in Act 3 embody her growing confidence and assurance. She has no understanding of the effects she has on others: Trigorin and Konstantin are besotted with her but Vicence León’s elderly frail Peter, Arkadina’s brother, also recognises her magneticism. Blind from birth, she is the only actor who briefly carries a foldable cane in Act 1, but she soon dispenses with it, falling under the spell of Trigorin who encircles her with increasing confidence. The issue of who sees what remains a mystery in the production and works well to articulate the thematics of the play: characters unable or unwilling to see what lies in front of them.

Patty Bonet’s love lorn Mascha. Photo: Bárbara Sánchez Palomero, courtesy of the Centro Dramático Nacional

This is particularly well handled in Act 3 as the characters party – singing along to a number of well-known tunes. First is English-born Spanish singer Jeanette’s 1974 breezy pop single, “Porque te vas” (Because you are leaving), a song written by crooner José Luis Parales and immortalised in Carlos Saura’s 1975 film Cria cuervos/Raise Ravens. Here the pop beat counters  lyrics of pain, longing and abandonment: a premonition of Nina’s impending departure to follow the irresponsible Trigorin.  Camilo Sexto’s 1978 hit “Vivir asi es morir de amor” with the lyrics projected on the wall offers a singalong for the whole cast. The song’s lyrics of unrequited love echo through the unhappy Mascha, Konstantin, Polina and Semyon. Seeing Patty Bonet’s Mascha’s frenzied singing and dancing as she screams the lyrics acquires a devastating poignancy. She stares as Konstantín while Semyon looks longingly at her; Konstantín turns to Nina but Nina only has eyes for Trigorin.

The characters party to evade facing their unhappiness. Photo: Bárbara Sánchez Palomero, courtesy of the Centro Dramático Nacional

“Vivir asi es morir de amor/living like this is dying of love”, a recurring line in the song, serves as a warning of Konstantin’s suicide at the closing of Act 4. Melancholy, a repeated word in the song, is projected large onto the back wall. The party offers a moment of release that gives stage form to the play’s subtext. While the characters sing as if their lives depended on it, trapped in their own worlds of desire and deceit, Nina and Trigorin kiss and make love. They cannot be seen by characters who are trapped in their own unhappy worlds.

The form that De Ferrari and her team give to despair and disillusion make this a remarkable production. Arkadina feels her way around Konstantin’s forehead with a tenderness that provides a rare and beautiful moment of intimacy between mother and son. The magic is broken as Elton John’s “Sacrifice” plays, with Konstantin aware of the danger Trigorin poses to his possibility of happiness with Nina, confronting his mother. He throws the bandage at his mother in disgust, spitting out his words of hate and frustration as he leaves the stage.

For Act 4, Alicia narrates the passing of time and audio-describes the room in which the action evolves while the actors take their seats in a circle. All have taken on new attire; it feels less formal, more like actors in a rehearsal. They face each other while simultaneously evading making eye contact. It is as if they have no choice but to see the play through to its terrible conclusion. Semyon wants to leave with Mascha but Mascha won’t budge from her seat, evading close contact with her husband. Konstantin wears his newfound literary fame in neater attire, softer brown corduroy replacing the austere black of his Act 1-3 trousers and shirt. Konstantin and Nina’s reunion is conducted with the two actors standing facing each other. The sense of entrapment is palpable, so is the sense of a circle of fate that can’t be escaped.  There is one moment when the circle is broken as Nina takes the hand of an audience member as she tells Konstantin that she no longer fears life. It’s a moment of significant emotional power demonstrating Nina’s newfound agency. Nina leaves while Konstantin takes his own life and it is left to the gentle Elias (the name given to Dorn’s doctor) to take Trigorin aside, asking the latter to take Arkadina away because Konstantin has shot himself.

The wooden slats on the floor of the stage help the actors with orientation and spacing. Alicia assists Nina in taking her place for Konstantin’s play and helps her off stage as she rushes off stage. Nacho Bilbao’s musician is both inside and outside the production, part of the party, an accomplice of Alicia as she tries to keep the production moving, humming, singing, playing, acting as DJ for the party and conjuring the soundscape for the staging.  The cast are uniformly excellent from Lola Robles prickly Arkadina — Robles was also the accessibility advisor on the production — to Domingo López’s earnest Semyon. Characterisation feels nuanced, from Belén González del Amo’s eager Nina who grows up during the piece to Patty Bonet’s sullen bleached blonde Mascha, keen to attract the animated Konstantin who remains forever out of reach. At a time where The Seagull seems the play of the moment in Spain with a new production at Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure placing the artist’s predicament centre stage and Fernanda Orazi’s La persistencia at Madrid’s Teatro del Barrio taking Nina’s predicament as the starting point for a reflection on acting and labour, De Ferrari’s powerful metatheatrical staging, with its centering of agency, desire and its discontents, feels fiercely contemporary.

The Seagull played at the Centro Dramático Nacional’s Valle-Inclán Theatre from 9 October to 10 November 2024