The Seag­ull

The­atre direc­tor Michael May­er and esteemed play­wright Stephen Karam come togeth­er to cre­ate the lat­est adap­ta­tion of Anton Chekhov’s ​‘The Seag­ull’. While indi­vid­ual per­for­mances shine, the film some­how fails to.

When ​‘The Seag­ull’ first hit the stage in 1896, the recep­tion was dis­as­trous. The audi­ence was report­ed­ly so hos­tile that one actress froze on the spot. How­ev­er, when direc­tor Kon­stan­tin Stanislavsky took on the chal­lenge two years lat­er, the play’s true beau­ty was revealed. Since then it has been adapt­ed sev­er­al times, and has fea­tured some of the most famous names in act­ing. The cast of this new screen ver­sion does not dis­ap­point, but ulti­mate­ly the whole thing doesn’t quite work.

The sto­ry takes place just out­side of Moscow, when aging actress Iri­na (Annette Ben­ing) goes to vis­it her ail­ing broth­er at his coun­try house. Accom­pa­ny­ing her is her young lover, a cel­e­brat­ed writer named Boris Trig­orin (Corey Stoll). Romance ensues between Trig­orin and Nina (Saoirse Ronan), the young beau­ty who is dat­ing Irina’s son, Kon­stan­tin (Bil­ly Howles).

To com­pli­cate mat­ters and add anoth­er branch of unre­quit­ed love, while Kon­stan­tin pines after Nina, he him­self is pined after by Masha (Elis­a­beth Moss), of whose exis­tence he is bare­ly aware. All this heartache under one roof of course has dra­mat­ic consequences.

Annette Ben­ing is the most mes­meris­ing force in the film. She is fun­ny, impos­si­ble and beau­ti­ful as Iri­na. Ronan is as charm­ing as ever, fit­ting the role of Nina per­fect­ly. And Elis­a­beth Moss deserves a spe­cial men­tion for her incred­i­bly fun­ny and yet sym­pa­thet­ic por­tray­al of the depres­sive Masha. Also con­vinc­ing as the tor­tured, slight­ly self-cen­tred writer is Corey Stoll, whose win­ning chem­istry with Ronan is one of the film’s strong points.

But despite some pow­er­ful per­for­mances and a good script, the film fails to con­nect. The scenery, cin­e­matog­ra­phy and elab­o­rate peri­od cos­tumes actu­al­ly dis­tract from the words, thus dulling their over­all impact. While Ben­ing, Ronan and Moss do their best to make the whole thing seem worth­while, The Seag­ull leaves you with the feel­ing that some plays just aren’t suit­ed to the big screen.