The venerable Upstart Crow is a Boulder institution founded in 1980 on the principle of “humble arrogance.” One of the instigators, for example, proudly works in the bolt aisle at McGuckin Hardware. It’s even on his resume . . . his theatrical resume.
He’s 76-year-old Richard Bell, director of the Crow’s new offering, no less than Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull.” He and wife Joan Kuder Bell’s upcoming 30th anniversary season will include works by Tom Stoppard, William Shakespeare and Jean Anouihl.
Talk about your humble arrogance.
Upstart Crow is a community ensemble made up of students, retirees and real-world creative folks who just want to put on a show. But they dabble with nothing less than the classics, which might span anyone from Moliere to Beckett. No Neil Simon or “Greater Tuna” in sight.
That they’ll only scratch the surface of “The Seagull” is evident from the opening line. And to their robust fan base, this is utterly secondary to the spirit of the attempt. The Crow is a place to learn, to play, to grow. It’s a place where every actor helps out with the technical work, the costume-making, the cleanup and everything between.
So when you are the outsider sitting in consideration of “The Seagull,” you’re not wrong to note the nervousness, the occasional steamrolling of lines.
But you’re a minority of one. This is the last place for a critic to be rousting about.
“The Seagull” is a monstrous challenge. Fully plumbed, it’s a devastatingly cruel chain of unrequited loves. A teacher named Semyon (Rock Solomon) marries Masha (Jessica Robinson), though she catatonically pines for Kostya (Joseph Illingworth), a failing young writer who’s morosely tethered to aspiring actress Nina (Hannah Marie Hines), who in turn yearns for the famous author Trigorin (Greg Christopher) who uses her and then tosses her aside. Whew.
And these are not just passing fancies. These are deep longings that drive the loveless to desperation. Chekhov’s text is filled with brilliantly sad musings about the timeless, incurable affliction of loving someone to wretchedness. How, Masha asks, does one tear love out of one’s heart by its roots? Not time, not distance, not children can.
But this is only a surface exploration. Hines shows great promise as Nina; and there’s a nice confrontation between Kostya and his awful mother, Irina (Mary Herndon Bell), whose dismissal of her son’s writing as decadent trash hastens his suicide attempt. But the full emotional pathos here remains largely unplumbed.
In his program notes, Richard Bell actually makes a case for “The Seagull” being a comedy, at least in structure: It’s character-driven, there’s little plot, and, now that you mention it, you do see a lot more boo-hooing in, say, “I Love Lucy” than “King Lear.”
But “The Seagull” is pretty much the Russian “Hamlet.” The idle young prince who’s jealous of his stepfather stages a play-in-a-play. Unclaimed love drives our Ophelia (Nina) to the brink. The characters twice quote “Hamlet.”
“The Seagull,” written in 1895, also comments on changing attitudes about writing and theater. It equates the burden of artistic drive to Jesus’ cross. But at heart, it’s the greatest love story never told.
The title refers to a bird Kostya has shot out of pure melancholy. When he dumps it at Nina’s feet, he unknowingly kills any chance he might have to be with her. For here is this gull that lives all her life happy and free, until some man comes along and, out of sheer boredom, destroys her. And in that bird, Nina sees herself.
The question is, who’s holding the gun?
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
