The Seagull

Sorry it has been so long since I’ve posted it has been summer so I’ve been busy and reading Samuel Richard’s Pamela (which I’m nearly done so you should have a lengthy post of that very soon)!

I’ve been rather pleasant in all my reviews the past few months but that doesn’t mean I like everything out there; believe me, I don’t plan on saying many nice things about Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull (4 acts, 71 pages). The version I read was translated by Tom Stoppard and his introductory essay was more exciting than the content and the characters of the whole play.

The conversations throughout the play were considerably lofty without actually saying anything of importance. This wasn’t helped by the fact that each of the characters where either a) boring, b) arrogant, or c) whiny. The only character I remotely liked was Nina; however, after the first act, she started to obtain all the characteristics I hated in the other characters.

This isn’t the playwrights fault but, the Russian names did make it hard for me to follow who they were talking about; also by switching from first to last names throughout. Although, like I said, that is my fault not Chekhov’s.

The only positive thing I do have to say is that I found another one of my interesting words in this play which was early in act one; tarradiddle. This was used in place of ‘nonsense’ which is far less interesting to say!

So all in all, I apologize for this being so short but I really only have more negative things to say.

The edition I read was ISBN: 978-0-571-19270-0.

Citation:
Chekhov, Anton. The Seagull. Trans. Tom Stoppard. New York: Faber and Faber, 2001. Print.