Three Sisters

GRADE: C

By Anton Chekhov. Directed by Christopher McElroen. The Harlem Stage Gatehouse. (CLOSED)

The response to the Classical Theatre of Harlem's Three Sisters leaves me wondering whether any of these critics saw the same play. CurtainUp's Gregory Wilson considers this the best Chekhov of the season (a season which included Ian Rickson's celebrated production of The Seagull), while Time Out NY's Adam Feldman felt pretty much the opposite. New York Times's Neil Genzlinger wasn't too thrilled with the show, but did like Roger Guenveur Smith's Vershinin, while The Village Voice's Christopher Grobe praised almost everything except Smith's performance.

CurtainUp A
(Gregory A. Wilson) In the end the real credit for the success of this production has to go to director and CTH co-founder Christopher McElroen, whose interpretive touches are uncannily accurate. McElroen strikes every right note, from intelligent and energetic staging to pacing to coherency of theme, and the result is a truly memorable performance. I saw a version of "Three Sisters" years ago in Seattle and found it competent but forgettable; in light of this superb production, though, I think more may have been wrong with that first take than I had ever considered. At his best, Chekhov can tap into the deep truths of humanity as well as any playwright, and this is Chekhov at his best. If you only have time for one work of classic theater this year, make it this one.

Village Voice A-
(Christopher Grobe) The production is full of excellent performances, which you can watch in minute detail thanks to the intimacy of the wide, shallow stage nestled between two banks of seating. The familiar dynamic, for instance, among the three sisters (played by Sabrina LeBeauf, Amanda Mason Warren, and Carmen Gill) is finicky and finely tuned. One performance, though, threatens to derail the whole project. As Vershinin, Roger Guenveur Smith seems to have landed from a different planet, or at least a different play. Sing-songy and glassy-eyed, this Vershinin--usually a pivotal figure in the play's romantic plot and moral debate--seems, instead, like an absurd bit-part.

Variety C-
(Sam Thielman) This is a busy play, and what it needs most is a firm hand guiding the audience from playing area to playing area as the show's interlocking stories unfold. The danger a director working with actors of varying skill levels on "Three Sisters" (or any Chekhov play) faces is distraction, and that's this production's biggest problem. When Solyony (Phillip Christian, overdoing the weirdness of a weird character) and Tuzenbach begin to debate, it's hard not to mentally wander across the stage to see what some of the other characters are doing... The show is aided immeasurably by designer Troy Hourie, whose all-Persian-carpets-all-the-time set is slowly rolled up and taken away as the Prozorov estate decays. Even with its many flaws, it's difficult not to recommend this production. "Three Sisters" is so hard to stage that it doesn't get done often enough, so theatergoers should jump at the chance to be moved by images like Masha, simultaneously pitiable and infuriating, weeping over her lost lover before her awkward, loving husband Kulygin (Jonathan Peck). There's a great deal of moving characterization here, but a better staging would provide much, much more.

The New York Times C-
(Neil Genzlinger) From Midtown, the subway ride up to the Harlem Stage Gatehouse feels a bit like the trip to Yankee Stadium: similar duration; roughly the same direction. For the current staging of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” at the theater, that seems fitting, because this is a production that, like the Yankees, has an assortment of stars but somehow never feels like a team effort. Maybe this is intentional on the part of Christopher McElroen, who directed this joint production of Harlem Stage and the Classical Theater of Harlem. This is, after all, a play about dissolution — of relationships, of dreams, of a social order — and a certain directionlessness is built into its characters. Still, the title siblings, different as they are from one another, ought to seem as if they were sisters; the others who populate their insular world ought to feel like old acquaintances. Here the actors often appear to be building their characters in a vacuum.

Theatermania D+
(Dan Balcazo) No one can sit still for very long in Classical Theater of Harlem's revival of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters, now at Harlem Stage. The characters are constantly alighting from the furniture, repositioning themselves, and sometimes even spinning around in circles. This restlessness may be an outward reflection of Chekhov's theme of discontentment that runs throughout the play, but it's also indicative of the uneven quality of director Christopher McElroen's production, which tends to skim the surface of the work rather than delving into its depths. As eldest sister Olga, Sabrina LeBeauf races through the majority of her lines without connecting to the meaning behind the words. However, she's much better when not speaking, and some of her nonverbal reactions to other characters are acutely expressive. Middle sister Masha is played by the charismatic Amanda Mason Warren, who does a fine job throughout most of the evening, but slips into an overly melodramatic mode towards the play's conclusion. As youngest sister Irina, Carmen Gill does just enough to convey her character, but doesn't go that extra step to make a memorable performance.

Time Out NY F+
(Adam Feldman)Christopher McElroen's blobby production of the play is not, shall we say, Moscow-ready: What should be theater about a community comes off as community theater. Sabrina LeBeauf plays Olga, the spinster schoolteacher; Amanda Mason Warren is the moody Masha; and Carmen Gill is the dreamy Irina. They have moments here and there (Warren when she is being emotional, Gill when she isn't), as do Reg E. Cathey as the dissolute doctor and especially Josh Tyson as the kindly baron. But small moments of credibility can't compensate for the production's gallery of slapdash portraits.

CurtainUp A 13; Village Voice A- 12; Variety C- 6; New York Times C- 6; Theatermania D+ 5; TONY F+ 2; 44/6 = 7.33 (C)

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Uncle Vanya

GRADE: C+

By Anton Chekhov (translation by Carol Rocamora). Directed by Austin Pendleton. Classic Stage Company. (CLOSED)

"Lively" is the word most frequently used to describe Austin Pendleton's brisk new production of Chekhov's despairing masterpiece--and in a few cases it's meant as a compliment. Many critics, though, are decidedly mixed on the show's merits. While they duly note the celebrity couple of Peter Sarsgaard and Maggie Gyllenhaal, the big recurring themes covered in the reviews are Denis O'Hare's contemporary-styled performance in the title role (for many critics, a deal-breaker); Santo Loquasto's imposing set (they're split on whether it serves or obstructs the staging); and Mamie Gummer's breakout turn as Sonya (near-unanimous raves). A judgment call: Nothing personal against Malcolm Johnson of the Hartford Courant, but his review didn't seem grade-able.

Time Out NY A
(David Cote) Staged with bipolar intensity by Austin Pendleton...This is happily not a case of celebrity ego and middling ability. Pendleton gets his whole cast on the same page; their approach to Chekhov seems to be to squeeze the text (Carol Rocamora’s half-fluid, half-clunky translation) for every last drop of sweat, spit and tears...Pendleton doesn’t let anyone go halfway, and the result is wondrously rich and textured, some of the best American Chekhov in years.

Theatermania A-
(David Finkle) Austin Pendleton...has brought the much-produced work to startling life...With the sort of calculation that comes across as effortlessness, he's created an atmosphere in which boredom and restlessness are like an inebriating aperitif the characters drink from the ubiquitous samovar...The players give the collective impression that they're to the Chekhov manner (and country manor) born. O'Hare's towering, sometimes cowering performance in Vanya's tense skin ranks him first among equals. Unpredictable as a summer storm, he builds his gnawing despair expertly up to the famous missed gunshot scene, although he strikes a perhaps too subdued posture during the show's final scene. Gyllenhaal...shrewdly uses a light and sometimes nasal voice to establish the vapidity that Yelena combines with uneasy compassion. Sarsgaard, who was miscast earlier this season in Ian Rickson's Broadway production of The Seagull, redeems himself Chekhov-wise with an agitatedly sympathetic take on the dedicated (if alcoholic) doctor. Gummer -- her blonde hair pulled back tightly and mouth just as tight -- allows Sonya's emotions to rise like bubbles in boiling water.

Variety B+
(Marilyn Stasio) Austin Pendleton's helming is physically energetic and far less gloomy than the customary theatrical take, allowing a sterling ensemble to exercise its comedic chops on the scribe's complaining privileged classes. Among these 19th century whiners, Denis O'Hare's Vanya uses an arsenal of neurotic tics to convey his generation's lost dreams and hopeless aspirations. Although Santo Loquasto's two-story set is more eye-catching than practical, with its deliberately obtrusive central staircase and spatially divisive beams, it's a pleasure to follow the designer's visual invitation to wander its half-hidden nooks and crannies, trying to read book jackets and peek behind the couch cushions in Vanya's study.

Associated Press B+
(Michael Kuchwara) Director Austin Pendleton has enlivened a satisfactory, humor-garnished banquet of tragic Chekovian themes in the Classic Stage Company's new production: pointless hard work, despair, people struggling at cross-purposes, negative epiphanies of wasted lives replete with unrequited longing. Carol Rocamora's translation modernizes the language while retaining the period eloquence. Denis O'Hare's Vanya smolders with impotent, increasing rage...Gyllenhaal expresses the unhappy, rueful Yelena's boredom physically, restlessly roaming the stage and frequently drooping over any available furniture...Peter Sarsgaard is beguiling and boyishly charming as the imperfect, hardworking, alcoholic doctor and family friend, Mikhail Astrov...Among this mostly miserable group, Mamie Gummer's delightful Sonya stands out as a hummingbird of repressed energy and lovesick inner turmoil.

The Record B+
(Robert Feldberg) If Gyllenhaal brings them through the door, it's two other actors, though, who give the very lively production — directed by Austin Pendleton from a translation by Carol Rocamora — its emotional power. Chekhov's plays are so often mis-directed as slow and melancholy, with passive inhabitants of Russian country estates making polite conversation rather than say what they really feel, that it's startling to see one of his characters blow his top. That's exactly what Vanya, played with verve and restless energy by Denis O'Hare, does, in a production that could be subtitled "Chekhov, American-style"...An equally passionate performance that touches the heart perhaps even more is provided by Gummer...Sarsgaard's Astrov is considerably less interesting.

AM New York B+
(Matt Windman) At first glance, what separates “Uncle Vanya” from the recent productions of “Seagull” and “Cherry Orchard” is the intimacy of Classic Stage Company’s three-quarter stage. Here, audience members actually feel like they have entered a Russian country house and are just flies on the wall. But perhaps more important is the total lack of an English director’s pretentious footprints...Austin Pendleton, who is also an accomplished playwright, brings straightforward but nuanced clarity to the drama by focusing on its seething sadness and character complexities. Denis O’Hare brings a playful spirit to the typically morbid role of Uncle Vanya that works quite well. As Yelena, Maggie Gyllenhaal is convincingly restless and bored, desperately searching to find meaning in and escape from her new marriage to a professor more than twice her age. And just as he did in “Seagull,” Peter Sarsgaard brings a cool, reflective spirit to country doctor Astrov. But the real surprise of this production may just be Mamie Gummer.

Edge NY B+
(Ellen Wernecke) With all eyes on the celebrity pair, they do an admirable job of not betraying themselves as more than what they are in the context of the play...But even with their collective wattage the night belongs to two of their costars even more. Denis O’Hare’s loose, natural and uncompromising portrayal of Vanya facing his wasted life soars above anything else going on onstage...Along with Gummer, no stranger to high expectations on the local stage, O’Hare is heartbreaking as Vanya and Sofya face the rest of their lives, him with a resignation, and her with a little bit of hope.

NY1 B+
(Roma Torre) Good but uneven production featuring an outstanding performance by Denis O'Hare...Pendleton's naturalistic approach along with Carol Rocamora's vibrant translation puts the 1899 masterpiece in a fresh new light. Somewhat less successful is Santo Loquasto's cluttered 2-tiered set featuring a line of towering beams diagonally intersecting the stage...The central performances are strong...While flawed, this production starts rather slowly, but it nicely manages to brush years of dust from the century-old classic, creating a Vanya that balances Chekhov's light and dark with remarkable relevance.

Nytheatre.com B
(Ivanna Cullinan) A very engaging production. Forthrightly Vanya-centric, it is briskly paced and features largely active characterizations that avoid the emotional wallowing and "now you will feel the pain of all that is Mother Russia" so common to Chekhov productions...It is deft and smart and wastes no time; I was truly surprised when I checked my watch at the end of the night. While this show certainly could benefit from slightly higher or at least more discernible emotional stakes, the speed and lightness of this production triumphs and makes for a delightful Chekhovian experience...Denis O'Hare...gives a strong and eccentric performance, well worth seeing...Maggie Gyllenhaal, an actress of skill, is simply not well used here and seems to lack guidance...There is a sense of life continuing that has been built by the largely thoughtful and probing direction of Austin Pendleton.

Total Theater B
(Richmond Shepherd) Director Austin Pendleton has given us a soft, slow, naturalistic version of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya...The cast communicates well, including a layered, moving performance by Mamie Gummer as the yearning Sofya and a believable Peter Sarsgaard as the doctor. The theater lights up when Maggie Gyllenhaal, Denis O’Hare and the antique George Morfogen take stage. Fighting the director’s intention to be real is the intrusive, overbearing, monstrous two-level set by the usually brilliant designer, Santo Loquasto. Poles block view of the action cause us to lose communication with moments of the play and crane our necks to see. Sorry, the play is not about the set...Of course you should see it -- it’s an intriguing conception of the classic play, and mostly, Pendleton’s languid vision and the fine acting keep us fully engaged.

Newsday B-
(Linda Winer) Flawed but often vibrant and intimate...Designer Santo Loquasto has bunched the worn, wooden rooms into at least five separate playing areas, a fascinating idea that allows us to overhear the whispers and yearnings in all the cozy corners. If the production never quite comes together - and unfortunately it does not - the problem comes down to Denis O'Hare's crazed but not vulnerable Vanya. This Vanya is so busy raging and being sarcastic - and, once, literally chewing the pillar in obsessive love and disillusionment - that we stop caring that he wasted his life on meaningless work. Things get silly, instead of foolish, finally dwindling into a meaner kind of emptiness than Chekhov, the clear-eyed humanist, demands. Still, there are many pleasures in this engaging, thoughtful staging, including Peter Sarsgaard (Gyllenhaal's real-life love and fellow indie star) as Astrov...Gyllenhaal, in her first major role on the New York stage, is seriously delightful as Yelena.

CurtainUp B-
(Elyse Sommer) Denis O'Hare's extremely idiosyncratic performance is intriguing even if it at times pushes the comedic envelope a bit too hard...Unfortunately, some of Rocamora's finely tuned text falls victim to director Austin Pendleton's frequently positioning the actors without any regard for the audience and encouraging a too conversational tone. Pendleton knows his Chekhov expert [sic?], having himself played Vanya, but his direction is at times as inconsiderate of the audience as the egotistical Professor's demands for tea and sympathy in the middle of the night...Maggie Gyllenhaal not only looks stunning in Suzi Benzinger's costumes but plays Yelena with exquisite ennui. She also delivers her lines with admirable clarity. Peter Saarskard's [sic] Astrov may not look like a man who's aged visibly and is teetering on the brink of alcoholism, but somehow his being trim and quite attractive, makes Yelena's and Sofya's attraction to him most convincing...Pendleton's major failure as the play's helmer is that he hasn't guided Mamie Gummer to project her voice.

Talkin' Broadway B-
(Matthew Murray) One would expect a more level playing field with such solid anchoring actors and a director (Austin Pendleton) who has made his own acclaimed excursions as an actor into Anton Chekhov’s exploration of personal desolation - and who displays here a keen understanding of the work’s vivid and volatile life. But...while Gyllenhaal and Gummer make some thrillingly individual acting choices to outline their characters’ despair, they don’t find the equivalent they need in Vanya’s central, dispirited figure...O’Hare is so jittery throughout, all ADHD mumbling and mugging, there’s no reason to believe this outburst is different from any other...This production is performed in an excellent translation (by Carol Rocamora) that dispenses with any hint of brooding filigree, and is directed by Pendleton with an energetic fluidity that mires no one in its wake. But Santo Loquasto’s set, a hefty framework of a house that makes all the indoor and outdoor areas of the professor’s estate simultaneously visible, offers a richer sense of forward motion that does O’Hare, even though it moves no more than Vanya himself does.

American Theatre Web C+
(Andy Propst) There's a marvelous rabbit warren-like visual to the design, but there come times when, no matter where one is sitting, one's straining to see the actors. Theatergoers may find that there's an additional strain put on their necks – a sort of whiplash – during this uneven staging from Austin Pendleton: individual performances vacillate, from the sublime to the wooden, often within the blink of an eye...Pendleton's production, which uses a simple and colloquial new translation from Carol Rocamora, deftly captures the sense of life on the estate and the effect that these characters have on one another in cramped quarters...It's acting that's the stuff of both magic and stuffiness. Only Gummer, seen in several other NYC productions of late, and daughter of actress Meryl Streep, delivers consistently.

Just Shows To Go You C+
(Patrick Lee) Radiant, captivating, and in full command of the stage, Maggie Gyllenhaal makes a vibrant and beguiling Yelena in the current production (at CSC) of this Chekhov classic. Unfortunately, hers is the only performance of the leading four that satisfies, a pity considering the production is judiciously paced (under Austin Pendleton’s direction) and - except for a scenic design that makes sightlines problematic from the theatre’s side seats - well considered. Denis O’Hare’s jangly, excitable take on Vanya isn’t invalid, but it finally lacks gravity: we aren’t made to deeply feel the character’s sense of futility or loss. Peter Sarsgaard’s character choices render Astrov overly neurotic and off-putting. I rarely saw more than the machinations of technique in Mamie Gummer’s performance as Sonya: she does much to convey the character’s anguish - the red eyes, the tears, the catch in the voice - but I didn’t believe any of it.

Backstage C+
(David Sheward) This Vanya and his unhappy friends and family are an active bunch...While this is a relief from the usual languid staging, Pendleton and his players too often go too far in the opposite direction....Despite the choice to play it over the top, O'Hare imbues Vanya with vibrancy and pathos. As Astrov, the dissolute doctor also smitten with Yelena, Peter Sarsgaard takes the opposite route, underplaying the role to the point of indifference...But the most startling revelation is Mamie Gummer as Sonya, Vanya's plain niece. This fine young actor has made several strong impressions in seasons past, but here she steps out of the shadow of her mother, Meryl Streep, to create a complex, infinitely shaded portrait of a closed-off life.

Wall Street Journal C
(Terry Teachout) A flawed enterprise whose defects arise from what I assume to be a specifically directorial decision: The acting is jarringly contemporary, the décor unabashedly traditional. Denis O'Hare's flip, whiny Vanya could have stepped straight off the set of a Woody Allen movie, while Peter Sarsgaard's blasé Astrov sounds like John Malkovich. Austin Pendleton, the director, is a gifted artist (he wrote "Orson's Shadow") who knows his Chekhov, but I can't see how the performances that he's drawn from his equally gifted cast are supposed to hook up with Santo Loquasto's old-fashioned country-house set and Suzy Benzinger's prerevolutionary costumes...The good news is twofold: (1) Maggie Gyllenhaal's slinky, seductive Yelena is an anachronistic joy to behold. (2) Mamie Gummer, who plays the lovesick Sonya, is heart-stoppingly intense. Hers is the only performance in this "Vanya" that would make as much sense in a more conventional production, and it adds to my fast-growing conviction that Ms. Gummer is one of the most exciting young stage actresses in town.

New York C
(Scott Brown) The actors...find little in the way of solid purchase for their characters’ pain—their flourishes feel like flourishes, their characterizations slip their gears—and this, I suspect, is not Vanya but Pendleton. He’s given his performers plenty of room, and a sizable jungle gym to play in. What he seems not to have given them is direction, in the most primitive sense of the word. The blocking is loose, the sightlines refracted by the busy set—sit in a different seat and you’ll see a different show...No one’s floundering, exactly, but everyone’s obviously fishing: There’s a lot of bubbly, unmotivated laughter, and lot of frustrated vocalizing. Yes, the ache of life is keenly felt, and no one’s expecting a cure—but would it be too terribly much to show us where it hurts and how much? This is Chekhov with fibromyalgia: An exquisite suite of symptoms radiating from nowhere, culminating in little...This is the sort of production that will probably improve exponentially over the course of its run.

Lighting and Sound America C
(David Barbour) I struggled to make sense of Santo Loquasto's setting, a towering, two-level structure that contains all of the play's locations in one unit design...It also provides the director, Austin Pendleton, with something of an obstacle course. Time and again, actors disappear behind a beam or a furniture arrangement; audiences sitting on the left or right of the theatre's three-sided configuration must strain to see what is happening across a crowded stage. The devastating final scene should bring us close to Vanya and Sofya; instead, it begins upstairs, with us craning our necks to see the actors. Finally, Pendleton is forced to pull them downstairs for the closing lines. There's also a strange lack of internal consistency to the staging...It seems part and parcel of the director's rather indulgent approach, in which actors and scenes suddenly shift into sharp focus, only to wander off again. This results in a production that varies considerably from actor to actor, and scene to scene...There's plenty of good work here, but, somehow it never quite adds up to a potent, coherent vision of the play.

New Yorker C
Denis O’Hare’s Vanya seems less like a lovesick widower than a squirrelly, callow college student...The set, by Santo Loquasto, is gorgeously rough-hewn, and highlights of the talented cast include Peter Sarsgaard, who sustains a mysterious air as the country doctor who is too smart for his surroundings, and Gummer, whose movingly fretful Sonya pines so deeply for the doctor. But their performances don’t match up with those of O’Hare and Gyllenhaal, whose casual American-style sarcasm and flirting never really lead to sufficiently Chekhovian tragic depths.

New York Post C-
(Frank Scheck) The revelation of this revival...is Mamie Gummer. As the lovesick Sonya...delivers a performance of...heartbreaking intensity...Unfortunately, none of the other performers rises to a similar level. Chekhov's brilliant blending of pathos and comedy is fiendishly difficult to execute, and in this uneven rendition - as is sadly the case with most productions - the results are mixed, at best. Director Austin Pendleton is a Chekhov veteran, having directed the play and starred in the title role several times previously, but his handling of the actors is curiously adrift.

Show Showdown C-
(Cameron Kelsall) The production itself is attractive and fluid, but suffers from crucial casting errors in several key roles. Both Denis O'Hare and Maggie Gyllenhaal, as Vanya and Yelena Andreevna respectively, are far too contemporary for such a traditional staging...Peter Sarsgaard, the weakest link of the aforementioned Seagull, fares slightly better here as the frustrated Dr. Astrov, but I believed neither his passion for Yelena nor his neutrality towards the plain Sonya (Mamie Gummer, in the first winning performance I've seen her deliver). In the end, it's a shame that Pendleton (a former CSC Vanya himself, in the late eighties) has to waste a generally winning mise-en-scene on such a disparate and defective group of actors.

Bloomberg News D+
(John Simon) Proves yet again that the presence of big stage and screen stars doesn’t assure a classic’s success. This “Vanya”...is like a noble oak chopped up into firewood. The three stars are the biggest deficit. Gyllenhaal is a winning movie actress, but her film roles have not prepared her for playing the beautiful, bored Yelena...Her real-life husband, Peter Sarsgaard, at home in contemporary Hollywood roles, is an uneasy squatter in the part of Dr. Astrov...The supreme disaster, though, is Denis O’Hare’s Vanya, all cutesy mannerisms, smudging affectations and overwhelming effeteness. All is artifice, posturing, self-satisfied exaggeration, whether vocal pyrotechnics or gestural extravagance, without an ounce of simple sincerity. He plays not good-but-troubled Vanya, but rather a miscast actor enacting a misguided concept...Under the usually able Austin Pendleton’s uncharacteristically fussy direction, the actors do a lot of busy little things. Nevertheless, they are unable to come up with a coherent overall characterization, let alone blend into a unified ensemble.

The Daily News D+
(Joe Dziemianowicz) Star-studded but rudderless...It lacks tension, humor and crisp characterizations while slogging along on a hulking set (an atypical misfire by Santo Loquasto) for 2½ hours...Sarsgaard does a credible job as the doctor. Gyllenhaal, who was so dynamic as a druggie in the film "Sherrybaby," plays Yelena with a slow-mo saunter and monotonous pasted-on smile that makes it seem as if she's been in Sherry's stash. O'Hare gives measured performances in "Milk" and TV's "Brothers & Sisters," but gets overly indulgent and abandons punctuation as Vanya...A laser-focused Gummer on the other hand gives the best performance and is a tremendously affecting as the sensitive and, finally, resigned Sonya.

New York Observer D+
(John Heilpern) We’ve all seen actors chew the scenery from time to time. It goes with the territory. But how many of us can claim to have seen an actor actually gnaw on a set? My thanks to the Tony Award–winning Denis O’Hare for providing a first in my theatergoing lifetime...While there’s no weirder symbol of Austin Pendleton’s hyperactive, utterly un-Chekhovian production of Uncle Vanya than Mr. O’Hare sinking his teeth into the woodwork, the set design by the usually excellent Mr. Loquasto is an expensive blunder...I’ve never seen a weepier Uncle Vanya than this one. (Isn’t the golden acting rule to let the audience do the weeping?)...With one outstanding exception (Mamie Gummer’s delightful Sonya), everyone in Mr. Pendleton’s wayward production is melodramatically out of sync.

Village Voice D+
(Alexis Soloski) Singularly lax...Pendleton has directed these "scenes of a country life" many times and acted the title role as often. Perhaps he couldn't summon the interest to do it again...Disregarding the internal rhythms of the acts, he lets some scenes unfurl at a jolly trot and others at a lugubrious crawl. He stages certain moments with great specificity and others with lassitude and haze. Significantly, he neglected to inform designer Santo Loquasto that his attractive two-tiered set—a loft with ample supporting beams—doesn't work in the CSC space.

Theater News Online D+
(Bernard Carragher) Only scratches the surface of this great work...This Uncle Vanya often seems to be at cross purposes and only comes alive in the climatic act two. One of its main problems is Mr. Pendleton's choice to use a translation by the Russian scholar Carol Rocamora rather than an adaptation...By providing only a literal translation by Ms. Racamora, Mr. Pendleton not only undercuts much of the play's drama and theatricality, but also sacrifices Chekhov's wonderful ironies. The play's set designer hasn't helped much either...Mr. O'Hare gets most of Vanya on stage, his performance is more honest and more competent - especially in manifesting the pathetically comic side of the character - than anyone else in the production which suffers from a lack of an ensemble cohesion.

The New York Times D
(Ben Brantley) You might argue that an agitated indecisiveness suits the plays of Chekhov, in which people trapped in the provinces are itching to escape their dull lives. In this case, though, the sensation that everything’s up in the air — and unlikely to fall into place before the final curtain — is generated less by the restless ambivalence of Chekhov’s characters than by the jittery performances of the undeniably gifted actors playing them. You start to think how differently things might have turned out for the discontented denizens of this great comic drama had Ritalin been available in Czarist Russia...I can understand the reasoning behind Mr. Pendleton’s attack on the play. He’s trying to shake the stiffness and stasis out of a classic and to loosen his cast out of brooding poses...But the impression here is less of people running after elusive dreams than of actors running after elusive roles. You’re always conscious of the scrabbling sound of performers digging deep into their psyches in search of buried emotions, as if you were sitting in on a session at the Actors Studio. Everyone still seems to be trying on insights for size.

TONY A 13; Theatermania A- 12; Variety B+ 11; Associated Press B+ 11; The Record B+ 11; AM New York B+ 11; EDGENy B+ 11; NY1 B+ 11; Nytheatre.com B 10; Total Theatre B 10; Newsday B- 9; CurtainUp B- 9; Talkin' Broadway B- 9; American Theatre Web C+ 8; Just Shows To Go You C+ 8; Backstage C+ 8; Wall Street Journal C 7; New York C 7; L&SA C 7; New Yorker C 7; New York Post C- 6; Show Showdown C- 6; Bloomberg News D+ 5; Theatre News Online D+ 5; The Daily News D+ 5; NY Observer D+ 5; Village Voice D+ 5; The New York Times D 4; 233/28=8.32 (C+)

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The Cherry Orchard

GRADE: B+

By Anton Chekhov. Directed by Sam Mendes. At the Brooklyn Academy of Music (CLOSED)

Critics for the most part are quite impressed with Sam Mendes and Tom Stoppard's take on Anton Chekhov's final play. This production--the first of a new entity called "The Bridge Project" which aims to bring together the best American and British theatre artists to work on classics--gets high marks for staging, acting and design. Some critics--notably Wall St. Journal's Terry Teachout and Bloomberg's John Simon--do not care for Sam Mendes' more expressionistic directorial touches in the second half, and even reviewers who like it frequently compare it unfavorably with the recent production of The Seagull on Broadway.

CurtainUp A
(Elyse Sommer) Actually, Tom Stoppard's beautifully accessible adaptation emphasizes the comic aspects of the play so that Beale isn't the only actor to dish up helpings of laughter. His version also lends itself to director Sam Mendes' giving free reign to the actors to speak in their natural accents. Mendes' directorial approach overall supports the emphasis on humor and at the same time depict the menace of the approaching revolution and its effect on the peasants and those who once ruled them. The stylish visual fillips work well enough to make this one of the engaging and enjoyable versions of this wonderful play that I've seen.

The New Yorker A
(Unsigned) This is truly the Chekhov play for the moment—it’s about facing up to economic reality, after all—but Sam Mendes’s lucid production of Tom Stoppard’s adaptation offers more than just relevance, teasing out the play’s deeper tragedy, of lost time. The talented cast (which will soon perform “The Winter’s Tale,” in repertory) is led by Sinéad Cusack, quietly ravishing as Madame Ranevsky, who fritters away the days as her family estate approaches the auction block.

Backstage A
(David Sheward) In this spare, elegant production for the new Anglo-American company the Bridge Project, Stoppard and director Sam Mendes force Ranevskaya and her family and friends to look in the mirror at their vanishing, frivolous way of life but also allow them their comforting illusions. Stoppard emphasizes hilarious comedy and merciless soul-searching in his idiomatic script, while Mendes carefully keeps high-concept moments to a minimum, giving them stronger impact and avoiding obvious symbolism.

Associated Press A
(Michael Kuchwara) Chekhov's last masterpiece, now on view at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater, is a play of unbearable heartbreak — a past lost, a present bleak and a future uncertain. Sounds right in sync with these tough economic times... In the end, what makes Mendes' take on The Cherry Orchard so affecting is its clarity in portraying loss. There is an awareness by the time the evening ends that something important has disappeared, never to return. The effect is haunting.

Theatre News Online A
(Bernard Carragher) I think this maiden endeavor of The Bridge Project is a remarkable achievement that will get richer the more it plays. The actors I suspect will jell more into an ensemble and the company's accents which are now all over the map - from Ms. Cusack's impeccable Queen's English to Mr. Hawke's flat colloquial American way of speaking - will settle down and become somewhat unified. That Mr. Mendes and his actors have achieved so much in such a short time is to use twenty-first century jargon: awesome

Wall Street Journal A-
(Terry Teachout) Not at all surprisingly, the director of American Beauty and Revolutionary Road has taken the political ball and run with it in this staging, whose second half is full of expressionistic gestures that are all too clearly meant to let us know that revolution is just around the corner. The first half, on the other hand, is wholly faithful to the complex spirit of Chekhov -- I can't recall another production of The Cherry Orchard in which comedy and elegy were so well balanced -- and while I had problems with the third and fourth acts, there was never a moment when I was anything other than enthralled.

New York Post A-
(Frank Scheck) Mendes' staging is filled with evocative touches: the melancholy score, performed by musicians perched in the side boxes; the masked ball, which begins the second act; Beale's violent toppling over of chairs, which serves as a perfect visual metaphor for the orchard's fate... The visually spare production fits in beautifully at the artfully dilapidated Harvey, though one wonders if it's mandatory that Oriental rugs cover the stage in every production there.

NYMag A-
(Dan Kois) People spend a lot of time talking about money, asking for money, looking on the floor for money, and arguing about money in the intelligent, well-acted revival of The Cherry Orchard at BAM that kicks off the Bridge Project. “There was lots of money in here yesterday, and now there’s hardly any,” complains the spendthrift Liubov Andreeva Ranevskaya (Sinéad Cusack) as she digs in her purse. “I’ve always squandered money without a thought, like some madwoman.” An aristocrat fallen on hard times, Liuba has returned to her family’s estate after years abroad, the house mere months away from public auction. You can’t fault this production for its timeliness: Who are the Ranevskayas but a family that’s in over its head on the mortgage? Director Sam Mendes has never been afraid of a showy flourish, onstage or off; take, for example, the Bridge Project itself, a cross-Atlantic experiment in classic repertory theater that intends to pack its productions with first-string actors and zing them merrily around the globe. In this Cherry Orchard, a sure-footed reworking by Tom Stoppard, the production’s big gestures are gorgeously realized but unnecessary.

NY Daily News A-
(Joe Dziemianowicz) This vibrant revival - the debut production by the Bridge Project linking American and English actors and theaters - has more going for it than good timing. There's Sam Mendes' astute direction, Tom Stoppard's lucid translation, graceful designs and performances to match.

TheatreNewsOnline A-
(Matt Windman) In all, The Cherry Orchard is a terrific start to a genuinely exciting enterprise.

Time Out NY B+
(David Cote) We all know the hoary clichés about English versus American actors. British thespians have mellifluous elocution and restrained physicality; Americans shout and smash furniture. They have technique, we got honesty. You can leave most of your transatlantic preconceptions at the door: Sam Mendes’s intelligent, satisfying revival of The Cherry Orchard features a neatly complementary Anglo-American cast. If there’s any roughing up of movables, it’s done by the very British Simon Russell Beale, whose Lopakhin celebrates his purchase of Ranevskaya’s estate by impishly tipping over a dozen wooden chairs.

Variety B+
(David Rooney) It's no match for this season's haunting reinvestigation of another Chekhov play, "The Seagull," but Sam Mendes' robust staging of Stoppard's witty new adaptation boasts strong ensemble work, centered by the gravitas and emotional nuance of Simon Russell Beale's riveting Lopakhin.

NYPress B
(Leonard Jacobs) Mendes over-imposes his directorial will on the play, however, and so the balance is off. Had he not bullied the play so, its tragic currents would no doubt have risen organically to the surface. The last 15 minutes of the play, when Mendes’ ideas clash with the actors’ impeccable impulses, is as painful as it is powerful. This is one of those situations in which you want to the actors to know how stunning they are before confessing how much the evening misfires.

The New York Times B
(Ben Brantley) The problem in playing Chekhov — and particularly “The Cherry Orchard” — is that the performers must convey the feeling of characters trapped in the solitary confinement of their own thoughts yet itching to connect. That double-edged sensibility was captured so seamlessly by the recent Broadway revival of “The Seagull”: the sense that no matter how alone the characters were, they all breathed the same oxygen. Mr. Mendes’s “Cherry Orchard” isn’t on that level. This is not because of the mixing of British and American performers. (The same cast will appear in repertory in Shakespeare’s “Winter’s Tale” starting Feb. 10.) “The Seagull,” remember, was similarly cross-cultural. But here some of the acting is too much on the surface in its big, eccentric flourishes. (Of the supporting actors, Dakin Matthews, as a sentimental, porcine landowner, is best at making those exaggerations feel organic.) On the other hand, Mr. Hawke’s goofy, aggressive naturalism in the role of a scruffy political idealist seems wrenchingly out of context. (That same performance worked in Mr. Stoppard’s “Coast of Utopia,” but it’s getting old.)


Bloomberg News B-
(John Simon) This is in most ways a respectful production, solidly acted yet presenting some problems... Mendes has directed ably, though not without some annoying quirks. He has obtruded a few heavily symbolic touches -- call them expressionist, if you will -- that clash with the basic naturalism, including one (an ascending backdrop revealing a menacing lineup of peasants) clearly pinched from Jack O’Brien’s staging of “The Coast of Utopia” by Tom Stoppard, whose decent translation is used here.

Newsday B-
(Linda Winer) In this new version by Tom Stoppard, the play's changing Russia is perceived almost in retrospect, as if Chekhov's exquisitely naturalistic serious comedy were really just an extension of Stoppard's own wonderful and massive epic about 19th-century Russian intellectual change, The Coast of Utopia.This is interesting as history. But Chekhov saw his world best in the present tense - as emotional excavation, not emotional spectacle. Mendes cheapens significant lines with melodramatic underscoring....The expressionistic effects tend to flatten instead of heighten what Chekhov called "the subtle, elusive beauty of human grief." Most victimized is Sinead Cusack, the blazingly gifted Irish-born actress whose portrayal of Ranevskaya, the vain and endangered landowner, crosses too often into the soap-opera delusional. As Trofimov, the perpetual student, Ethan Hawke is encouraged to repeat too much of his impressively febrile character in "Utopia." But Josh Hamilton has an insinuating erotic charge as Yasha, the social-climbing servant and Rebecca Hall (Vicky Christina Barcelona) is especially haunting as Varya, the long-suffering adopted daughter.

Theatermania C-
(Brian Scott Lipton) Indeed, [Sam Mendes and Tom Stoppard] have failed to locate the deep melancholia at the heart of Chekhov's work, instead indulging in cheap laughs, easy sentiment, and the occasional unnecessary coup de theatre. They haven't completely misunderstood Chekhov, of course; the play's message -- that time has passed from the old to the new as the class system in turn-of-the-century Russia becomes extinct -- comes through very loud and clear. But the missed connections for love and understanding between and among its characters too often fade into the background when they need to come to the foreground.


AP A 13;CU A 13; TNY A 13; TNO A 13; BS A 13; NYDN A- 12; TNO A-; WSJ A- 12; NYMAG A- 12; NYP A- 12; Variety B+ 11; TONY B+ 11; NYP B 10; NYT B 10 ; BB B- 9; ND B- 9; TM C- 6; TOTAL: 191 / 15 = 11.23 (B+)

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The Black Monk

GRADE: C+

Book, music and lyrics by Wendy Kesselman, adapted from Chekhov. Dir. Kevin Newbury. South Ark Stage at the Beckett Theatre. (CLOSED)

Apart from Variety's Marilyn Stasio, critics didn't give their blessing to Wendy Kesselman's musicalization of Chekhov's short story, about a young man haunted by the muse of the title. A few critics praised isolated elements of the production—Charlie Corcoran's set, Julie Craig's singing voice—but most had reactions ranging from disappointed to bewildered, and several focused on lead actor Austin Pendleton's inability to sing.

Variety B+
(Marilyn Stasio) Wendy Kesselman's dark and dainty musical about a young painter who goes gracefully mad in his little house by the sea...is just the ticket for small art venues with refined tastes...It helps to have Kevin Newbury at the helm of a tiny, tight ensemble toplined by Austin Pendleton, whose devilish grin as the mysterious monk is enough to give anyone night sweats.

Backstage B+
(Ronni Reich) [Kesselman's] knack for finding the emotional marrow of each situation makes for a powerfully concise book...A few melodies stand out, like the whimsical "Apples and Pears" and Andrei's feverish final song, but there are no showstoppers, and not every number serves the drama...The musical's structure is also jarring, with songs relentlessly piled on top of one another at the beginning but much more breathing room toward the end. The cast's acting is much stronger than its singing, and these later scenes are positively gripping. Indeed, The Black Monk as a whole works much better as a drama than as a musical.

New Yorker B-
Kesselman sets aside Chekhov’s philosophical concerns—does greatness necessitate madness? Is inspiration worth the price of sanity?—in favor of lovers’ ballads and period-friendly histrionics. Thankfully, the monk is played by the veteran character actor Austin Pendleton, who, smiling impishly, manages to add some life to the stilted proceedings.

CurtainUp C
(Elyse Sommer) I couldn't help hoping that this might be another off-Broadway sleeper like last year's unusual musical adaptation of Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine...which also fit the chamber opera genre. Unfortunately this is not the case...Somehow the actualized monk of the story-propelling fable comes off more like a pixy-like fantasy figure from an old B-Movie comedy than a powerfully mysterious force...This odd little show is not without assets. The music is enjoyably melodic.

Village Voice C-
(Alexis Soloski) Kesselman has simplified and sentimentalized the tale: Her version concerns Andrei (Elon Rutberg), a student who returns to his childhood home and embarks on a frenzied career of painting and hallucinations...Pendleton plays that hallucination, a barefoot friar attired in black robe and cowl. At first, he appears sinister, but eventually he takes on the air of a dotty uncle—reading other people's mail, stealing sips of champagne, lolling on a rope swing, talking his way through his songs. When he does sing, you wish he wouldn't...One rather longs for this Black Monk, like so many of his brethren, to take a vow of silence.

Theatermania C-
(David Finkle) Extremely disappointing...Very little about the show, including the direction of Kevin Newbury or the performances of a cast led by Austin Pendleton, is particularly effective, although Charlie Corcoran's set is nicely conceived.

Talk Entertainment C-
(Oscar E. Moore) The taupe and grey colored set by Charlie Corcoran is wonderful and evocative of the many different scenes in this intermissionless, interminable chamber piece. It’s a pity that the score is not as intriguing or as interesting as the set. Or the story for that matter...Mr. Pendleton striving to sing, striving to find his pitch, striving to find his way around the set is neither menacing nor compelling. Weak of voice he sometimes looks confused or maybe he is simply embarrassed to be a part of such a weak show.

NY Times D
(Jason Zinoman) Deadly earnest chamber musical...reveals that even Mr. Pendleton has his limits...Kevin Newbury’s toothless production, at the Beckett Theater, never escapes nor even fulfills its own clichés. Mr. Rutberg is far too much of a milquetoast for the part of the tortured painter, tiptoeing on the line between madness and genius when a few good stomps would do...[The] garden is a major motif (Tanya’s father is a horticulturist), but instead of a set covered in flowers, a trap door opens on the pale wooden floor to reveal a pitifully small, square plot of green. Paradise it’s not.

Variety B+ 11; Backstage B+ 11; New Yorker B- 9; CurtainUp C 8; Village Voice C- 7; Theatermania C- 7; Talk Entertainment C- 7; NY Times D 5; 65/8=8.13 (C+)

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The Seagull

GRADE: B+

By Anton Chekhov. Dir. Ian Rickson. Walter Kerr Theatre. (CLOSED)

This London-imported production of the Chekhovian chestnut drew ecstatic reviews from many critics, particularly for the performances of Kristin Scott Thomas as Arkadina and Carey Mulligan as Nina. Many critics were left cold by Peter Sarsgaard, an American addition to the cast as Trigorin, and a number of critics dissented—some vehemently—from the general praise for Rickson's production and Christopher Hampton's adaptation.

New York Times A+
(Ben Brantley) Brought to life by a superlative ensemble led by Kristin Scott Thomas, the thwarted souls of The Seagull are as self-revealing in frozen speechlessness as they are in frantic flights of conversation...The careful cultivation of such transparency, to the point that we feel instinctively tuned into the minds of every individual onstage, helps to make this Seagull the finest and most fully involving production of Chekhov that I have ever known...It is, to make honest use of the language of hucksters, a limited, once-in-a-lifetime offer.

AP A+
(Michael Kuchwara) A revelation. There have been several productions of The Seagull in New York within the last year or so but none has had the clarity and emotional impact of Christopher Hampton's new translation. Hampton's crisp, clean adaptation lays the groundwork for director Ian Rickson's uncommonly lucid revival.

Chicago Tribune A+
(Chris Jones) One of those rare shows that make you feel like you're experiencing a great play working better than you've ever seen it work before...The stage brims with fascinating performances, including a dazzling turn from Kristin Scott Thomas as Arkadina, the mother from hell...As Konstantin, Mackenzie Crook...is deliciously neurotic even as Peter Sarsgaard...finds new levels of self-loathing in Trigorin. When you add Zoe Kazan's Goth Masha and a heartbreaking Nina from the newcomer Carey Mulligan, this Seagull will be a tough revival to better.

Philadelphia Inquirer A+
(Toby Zinman) This magnificent production of The Seagull, transferred from London to Broadway, gets it absolutely and thrillingly right...The ensemble acting magically includes us—we feel that we're in the house, part of the family—holding the audience hushed, except for laughter, and rapt for nearly three hours.

The New Yorker A
(John Lahr) When this production was mounted in London—it was [Ian] Rickson's swan song at the Royal Court, after nine years as its artistic director—the English newspapers generally agreed that it was the best Seagull in living memory. Even though the size of the Walter Kerr Theatre mutes the intimacy of the original production, Rickson factors out Chekhov's algebra of aimlessness with extraordinary nuance. The evening, and the ensemble's achievement, is remarkable.

NY Times A
(Charles Isherwood) The production strikes a consistently bleak note...The somber palette, the eerie, shuddering music and the echoing silences between speeches subtly underscore the play's proto-existentialist underpinnings...No production I've seen contains so many fully rounded portraits.

The Journal News A
(Jacques Le Sourd) The word for the new production of The Seagull on Broadway is lucid. That's a trickier accomplishment than you might think...[Carey] Mulligan's intense and beautifully wounded performance [as Nina] is one of the riveting gems of this production. You won't soon forget it.

NY Post A
(Clive Barnes) This is a play about thrown-away lives and spiritual emptiness, and here it's staged with natural fluency by Ian Rickson, with an elegant new adaptation by Christopher Hampton that sounds as though it were written the day before yesterday.

Daily News A
(Joe Dziemianowicz) With its crisp, conversational script by Christopher Hampton and graceful, steady-handed direction by Ian Rickson...the production is as stirring as it is entertaining...As the aging theater diva Arkadina, [Kristin ]Scott Thomas is sly-eyed, sharp-tongued and sure-footed (a little sprightly scampering proves her vigor) and holds you rapt while just standing motionless. In short, she's heaven in her Broadway debut.

Theatermania A
(David Finkle) Kristin Scott Thomas['s] interpretation of mercurial middle-aged actress Arkadina is its own thrilling fireworks display...While Scott Thomas' success is somewhat expected, given her film and stage pedigree, Carey Mulligan's stunning turn as the impressionable and eventually destroyed Nina arrives less heralded...Rickson derives nuanced portrayals from the entire ensemble.

Hartford Courant A
(Malcolm Johnson) The Seagull has enjoyed a vogue of late with star-strewn revivals. But the new arrival at the Walter Kerr Theatre outclasses them all, with the truly brilliant Kristin Scott Thomas heading the cast....A nearly ideal version of the first of Anton Chekhov's final four masterpieces, largely because of the new adaptation by Christopher Hampton. The cast comes mostly from the Royal Court, with a few Americans, but Ian Rickson has seamlessly blended the ensemble.

Newsday A-
(Linda Winer) How thrilling, finally, to have a version of The Seagull that understands why we cherish Anton Chekhov. After two awful revivals here this year alone...the 1895 tragicomedy of lovesick artists and artless loves arrives from London with most of Ian Rickson's visually stark, emotionally luscious production intact.

Variety A-
(David Rooney) Rarely is the writer's signature balance of humor, pathos and tragedy so exquisitely rendered or the modulation between them orchestrated so affectingly. Despite one casting choice that doesn't quite measure up, this is powerful theater...Still, one uncertain characterization in a panorama of so many full-bodied, revelatory ones does little to dull the incandescence or the overwhelming emotional impact of this illuminating production.

Theater News Online A-
(Sandy McDonald) Newly grafted onto the mostly London-original cast, Sarsgaard, sorry to say, is a cypher [sic] so far: more complacent than smug, and sexually null...That said, is this one of those life-list productions that demand to be seen? Unreservedly, yes.

The Hollywood Reporter A-
(Frank Scheck) The Royal Court Theatre's production of The Seagull has flown triumphantly from London to New York with most of its acclaimed cast intact. This beautifully modulated revival of Chekhov's classic, presented in a new version by playwright Christopher Hampton...and starring Kristin Scott Thomas in her belated New York stage debut, figures to be the snob theatre event of Broadway's fall season.

North Jersey Record B+
(Robert Feldberg) The flaws are disappointing, but far from fatal, in an often terrific theatrical experience...I've never seen another production...that was so immediate and alive, so rich in its exploration of the characters...The main newcomers to the cast are [Peter] Sarsgaard and [Zoe] Kazan, and they stick out like sore thumbs.

New York B
(Dan Kois) This Seagull...has its share of stars, with Kristin Scott Thomas reprising her acclaimed Arkadina and Peter Sarsgaard as Trigorin. But with both those performances hitting one note—Thomas's, expertly, the manic diva; Sarsgaard's, less so, a sort of beige beardiness—the real joys are in the supporting cast...Ian Rickson's direction is attentive throughout, and occasionally inspired.

Time Out NY B
(Adam Feldman) The complex romantic ecology of The Seagull requires unusually strong ensemble acting, which Ian Rickson's production...apparently boasted in London last year. On Broadway, the cast is less secure. The English transfers are generally strong, but some of the Americans struggle—notably Peter Sarsgaard.

Talkin' Broadway B-
(Matthew Murray) "The Seagull, like so many of Chekhov's works, thrives on the relativistic concerns surrounding time's unforgiving nature. This production's nimble new version of the text, by Christopher Hampton, crystallizes this for modern audiences...Portions of this production stand as among the most inventive reconsiderations of the work to hit New York stages in quite a while. Purists, however, may balk at some of the new avenues revealed by Rickson and his company as a result of Hampton's and Scott Thomas's youthening of the play.

Back Stage C+
(David Sheward) Under [Ian Rickson's] guidance, the repressed souls on Sorin's country estate...barely conceal their roiling emotions as they either languidly recline or contort themselves into pretzel shapes of anguish. Rickson has emphasized the pain of love and artistic creation, forgetting Chekhov celebrated its pleasures as well. There is lively staging and powerful acting, but the joy is missing. These people don't even seem to have any affection for each other, an essential element of the author's vision.

USA Today C+
(Elysa Gardner) Sarsgaard doesn't rise to the challenges confronting him any more than his complex and crucial character does. It might be an overstatement to say that his curiously awkward, lackluster performance fatally wounds this Seagull...but only a slight one...That's a shame, because the other legs in Trigorin's romantic triangle could hardly be sturdier.

Wall Street Journal C
(Terry Teachout) This is a very British Seagull, but not in the pale, old-fashioned way: I've never seen a production of The Seagull that was played so successfully, even relentlessly, for laughs...Compared with the Classic Stage Company's recent Off-Broadway Seagull, which was as intimate as it was immediate, this production struck me as both too big and (so to speak) too noisy.

Bloomberg News C-
(John Simon) The acting is mostly good, though the casting and direction are questionable. The women are either exaggerated or misrepresented: The always fascinating Scott Thomas is prodded into an Arkadina even more actressy than the text already calls for...Director Ian Rickson's pacing, alternating between hyperactivity (a lot of bustle) and inertia (inordinate pauses) detracts from the prescribed conventionality.

amNew York C-
(Matt Windman) With the exceptions of Ms. Thomas and the similarly eccentric and lively Zoe Kazan as Masha, this Seagull lacks theatricality and ensemble chemistry. And more often than not, it feels dull, quiet and slow...Decent but rather lame and extremely over-praised.

NJ Star-Ledger D
(Michael Sommers) Perhaps I'm merely sick of seeing so many revivals, but this particular dish doesn't satisfy...Bleak in visuals and chilly in manner, there is little beauty and no charm to Rickson's grim interpretation of Christopher Hampton's neatly composed text...All piercing eyes and sharp features, Thomas is an energetic Arkadina who whirls off into little dramatic flurries indicating the diva's it's-all-about-me nature...None of the other actors make much of an impression other than Zoe Kazan, whose restless Masha seems not so much mournful about her life as irritated by the dreary household.

Village Voice F
(Michael Feingold) I can't remember ever seeing a duller or more pointlessly misguided rendition of this frequently staged play...Chekhov's world has rarely seemed more remote, his dramaturgy more stilted. Stanislavsky, come back—all is forgiven.

New York Times A+ 14; AP A+ 14; Chicago Tribune A+ 14; Philadelphia Inquirer A+ 14; NY Times A 13; The New Yorker A 13; The Journal News A 13; Daily News A 13; Daily News A 13; Theatermania A 13; Hartford Courant A 13; Newsday A- 12; Variety A- 12; Theater News Online A- 12; The Hollywood Reporter A- 12; North Jersey Record B+ 11; New York B 10; Time Out NY B 10; Talkin' Broadway B- 9; Back Stage C+ 8; USA Today C+ 8; Wall Street Journal C 7; Bloomberg News C- 6; amNew York C- 6; NJ Star-Ledger D 5; Village Voice F 1; TOTAL: 276 / 26 = 10.6 B+

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