"THE SEA-GULL."

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 226, 23 September 1940, Page 9

"THE SEA-GULL."

RUSSIAN PLAY. A W.E.A. PRODUCTION. The W.E.A. Dramatic dub's policy of bringing to ins public and members art forma which are rarely exploited here by the popular stage, is represented in its presentation for this year of a Russian play, "The Seagull," by Anton Chekhov, with which the club opened a four-night season on Saturday evening in its litile theatre in the Old Grammar School buildings in Symonds Street. Expression of a phase of pre-Soviet life in Russia, and written in 1896, "The Seagull" has been taken up by the Soviet stage as a classic, and its sombre Slavic realism is relieved by an underlying message of hope. The W.E.A. version on Saturday night clearly intrigued the attention of a crowded house by the fine production, and by the methods used to obtain the various character analyses on which the author relies for conveying his message. Alien from our conventional outlook in many respects, the realism of "The Seagull" was translated by the W.E.A. cast into a clear picture of the period and the people. A dozen characters are involved in the portrayal of half a dozen interlocked moods by which the message ie conveyed, and the anonymous actors and actresses sustained a lively and fluent interest in the march to a climax. Graphic settings and telling light effects were features of the play, which must go down as another striking Arnold Goodwin production. It was obvious that careful attention had been given to the vocal' register range of the several characters which has to be graduated over an unusually big scale, but an impression was left that some of the "a«id«s" could be pitched, a little higher for the benefit of back-row patrons. "The Seagull" will be produced at the W.E.A. Theatre each evening up to and including Wednesday next.