Theater: Go Weist

In the second line of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, when the schoolteacher Medvedenko asks young, pretty Masha why she’s always adorned in black, the tone of her legendary reply—“I’m in mourning for my life”—often signals the type of production it will be. Spoken wet with self-pity, the play may lurch into comedy, only later to contrast with the stifling melancholy suffered by Chekhov’s characters. Spoken dryly, The Seagull may topple into tragedy, only later to be drained of its mordant humor.

So when Marjan Neshat’s searching, winsome Masha offers this immortal line seriocomically in the mixed-blessing revival of The Seagull at Classic Stage Company, it’s a signal that all might actually end up perfectly calibrated. Perhaps we should expect as much from director Viacheslav Dolgachev, the former leading light of the Moscow Art Theatre and current artistic director of the Moscow New Drama Theatre. But whereas Dolgachev soaks the play in tones and mood—lighting designer Brian MacDevitt’s cruel autumnal colors—the pace lumbers along, almost to the point of exhaustion. Santo Loquasto’s formalist setting and Suzy Benzinger’s class-conscious period costumes may fill our visual senses to a fare-thee-well, but what’s the use of optical bedazzlement when your pulse has slowed to a crawl?

Here’s what’s odd: Despite a language barrier between the Russian-speaking Dolgachev and his American actors (four rehearsal translators are listed in the program), he has nevertheless elicited some of the most intricately textured acting of The Seagull that I’ve ever seen. As the aging actress and mother Arkadina, played by a corseted, wide-lipped Dianne Wiest, is a grotesquerie of monstrous ego. Whether parading about in full schoolgirl-lust mode for Alan Cumming’s annoyingly self-contained young novelist Trigorin or engaging in Oedipal battles with her son, John O’Nan’s forever-anguished Treplev, Wiest’s complex Arkadina both salutes and transcends Paul Schmidt’s translated text. Wiest is riveting, empathetic, adorable, infuriating, divine—and also terrifying.

Wiest also raises the bar for the rest of the cast. As Arkadina’s brother, the wheelchair-bound Sorin, John Christopher Jones is a very wry toast. Equally admirable is Greg Keller’s Medvedenko, growing more forlorn as his love of Masha goes unrequited—for she pines, after all, for Treplev, thus beginning the play’s La Ronde-like sequence of ill-fated romances. Treplev, you see, loves Nina, the ethereal neighbor who in Act 1 performs his dreadful symbolist monodrama for an audience that includes Arkadina, Sorin and David Rasche’s blithely amused Dr. Dorn. As Nina—who falls in love with acting and Trigorin—Kelli Garner is not yet fully formed, a still-growing flower more than a flower in bloom. Yet it’s just as well, for Nina’s actions in the play, most of which take place offstage, are those of a woman with an incomplete identity.

And remember, hell hath no fury like a middle-aged actress threatened by a younger woman’s love of her youth-affirming boy-toy. This is why Wiest, infuriated by Nina’s love of Trigorin, plays the jealousy card so expertly. Yet why doesn’t Cumming—of all actors—know how to play a smoldering poet?

It isn’t just Treplev’s hatred of Trigorin, or his desire to be a truly great artist, that cleaves him from his mother. O’Nan’s Treplev also pines for a mother who can mother, not just act. Wiest’s work acknowledges Treplev’s need—and in their famous Act 3 confrontation scene, struggles mightily to fulfill that need. That Arkadina can’t do so is what’s triumphant about this revival—and why I’m not in mourning for it. But I am wearing black.

Through April 13. Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St. (betw. 3rd & 4th Aves.), 212-352-3101; $70-$75.