Chekhov's Rug - a theatre review (Cecilia Peartree)

Stage Struck

I recently went to the theatre for the first time for months. Unfortunately this scheduled outing happened to coincide with yet another development in my medical recovery, which reminded me of my October post about the gas man in that the latest complaint was a bad back, apparently caused by excessive coughing during an asthma attack which itself had been the legacy of a collapsed lung I suffered during heart surgery. I was slightly apprehensive about going to the theatre, but I reasoned that it wasn't going to be as much like hard work as my trip to one of several hospitals in Edinburgh for a chest x-ray the other week. The corridors at the theatre aren't nearly as long as those in most hospitals, and I know my way around this particular theatre so well that I could picture myself getting to my reserved seat, and I knew I could do it. Also there would be ice-cream, which immediately made the excursion worthwhile. Anyway, I was determined to see this particular play as I had been hoping for years that something by Chekhov would appear on the programme for the season. Also, I had missed seeing the friend I've been going to the theatre with for at least twenty years. (We have actually known each other for over fifty!)

The play was Chekhov's 'The Seagull'. It was the first time I'd seen it, and I didn't really know the story and despite using hearing aids nowadays I can never quite hear all the dialogue at the theatre. However, I make up for this in a way by noticing everything about the sets and the props involved. I helped to look after props, and in a couple of cases did some set painting, for an amateur theatre group for a few years in what I liked to think of as my spare time, so I have a special interest in props and sets. This production had very interesting sets and lots of props, some of them quite odd (the seagull of the title). I also liked the way the cast interacted with the sets - there was a lot of movement, especially in Act 1 when some of the characters used a miniature stage sitting on the real stage.

Something that really caught my attention was that by the final act of the play, the set seemed to have shrunk. A rug that had been used more casually in the previous acts was now centre stage, and all the furniture arranged on it, so that the actors seemed to have trouble moving about and in some cases had to push past each other to get to where they were going. One group were playing cards, while individual characters were engaged in separate conversations or activities. But it all looked like a bit of a crush. 

Because I like to mull over these things, I eventually decided the positioning of the rug and the fact that the furniture seemed almost to trap the characters, was symbolic of the claustrophobic lives most of them led. Another friend who had gone to see the play separately, was surprised by this insight. Maybe it was only because I missed some of the dialogue that I had time for these musings. 

Incidentally, when I told my son, who has a degree in English and is much more literary than I am, about the play and my analysis of the final act, he laughed and said, 'I suppose you could call that Chekhov's Rug'.

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