Chichester Festival Theatre 2003


Philip Quast performed in by Gale Edwards production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice as Antonio, and also in Steven Pimlott's production of Chekhov's The Seagull, playing the part of as Trigorin.

Check out details on the Chichester Festival Theatre's website.

We would like to thank Chichester Festival Theatre for providing us with details of this production and providing us with Official Photograghs.


Productions:


Back stage pictures of some of the cast from Chichester

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

William Shakespeare (1596/7) from 6 JUNE - 2 OCTOBER 2003

"All that glisters is not gold
Often have you heard that told…"

Written between 1596 and 1598, The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare's most complex and difficult plays. Although generally considered a comedy, this play has an underlying plot of considerable moral dimension.

A dark comedy of love and money, where everything depends upon appearances and nothing is quite what it appears. Amidst the splendour of the palaces and canals, the best and worst of human qualities collide in a fable as contemporary as it is ageless. Even in the fairy-tale city violence may lie just around the corner.

Director: Gale Edwards
Designer & Season Installation Designer : Alison Chitty
Lighting Designer: Chris Ellis
Sound Designer: Paul Arditti
Composer: Mia Soteriou
Assistant Director: Lucy Jameson
Design Assistant: Mark Friend
Costume Supervisor: Mary Fisher
Voice Coach: Andrew Wade
Company Stage Manager: Amelia Ferrand-Rook
Stage Manager: Jo Bradman
Deputy Stage Manager: Louise BAnn
Assistant Stage Managers: Rebecca Fifield & Guy Thompsonade
Morocco's Scimitar Work: Terry King
Arragon's Movement Coach: Jonathan Lunn
Additional Movement Work: Steve Elias


Cast:

Production Photo

Venetians

Shylock's Household & Friends

Portia's Household & Suitors

Senators, Citizens of Venice, Jailer:

MUSIC

Synopsis:

Merchant of VeniceIn a street of Venice the merchant Antonio laments that he is sad but knows not why. His friends Solanio and Salerio try to cheer him up, to no avail. More friends, Lorenzo and Gratiano also try and fail. Antonio's friend, Bassanio, asks for a loan of 3,000 ducats to travel to Belmont to court the beautiful heiress, Portia. Antonio agrees, but says that he must borrow the money from one of the city's moneylenders because all of his ships are at sea.

Antonio and Bassanio approach Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, to ask for a loan. Shylock hates Antonio because of the insulting treatment that Antonio has shown him in the past and tricks him into promising to forfeit a pound of flesh if he cannot pay in time, hoping Antonio will default on the loan.

At this stage of the play, Portia is introduced: due to her father's will, all suitors must choose from among three coffers, one of which contains a portrait of her. If a man chooses the right one, he may marry Portia; however, if he chooses wrong, he must vow never to marry or even court another woman. She likes none of her six suitors but wishes Bassanio would come and choose the correct chest. As Bassanio prepares to travel to Belmont for the test, his friend Lorenzo (a Christian gentleman) elopes with Jessica, Shylock's daughter (who escapes with a fair amount of Shylock's wealth in the process).

In contrast to this happiness, Antonio finds himself in a pinch. Rumours swirl that Antonio's ships have been lost at sea, and his creditors including the vengeance-minded Shylock are grumbling about repayment. Shylock then laments of his monetary loss to another Jew, Tubal, yet rejoices that Antonio is sure to default on his loan.

Bassanio arrives at Portia's house. He and Portia fall in love, and he makes the correct choice (the lead casket), to seal the union, Portia gives Bassanio a ring, warning that he should never lose it or give it away, lest he risk losing her love for him, but their happiness (and that of Gratiano, who will marry Portia's lady-in-waiting, Nerissa) is interrupted by news that Antonio has lost all his money and failed to pay the debt. Shylock is demanding his pound of flesh.

In Venice, Antonio is taunted by Shylock, who refuses to listen to reason. When Bassanio returns to Venice, Portia disguises herself as a man and secretly follows him. The Duke of Venice presides over the trial. When Shylock refuses to accept Bassanio's offer to repay the loan, the Duke announces that he has called on a legal expert to settle the matter. A letter arrives from the expert, saying that he has sent one of his brightest pupils to pass judgement. The pupil is Portia who arrives dressed as a young male lawyer. She reads the contract and declares that Shylock is entitled to the flesh. The moneylender praises her but Portia then adds that the contract says nothing about shedding blood, so Shylock must cut the flesh without making Antonio bleed or else be arrested for taking a Christian's blood.

Shylock angrily retreats and says that he will take Bassanio's money, but Portia denies him this recourse, declaring that he has conspired against a Venetian citizen's life and thus his own life is forfeit. However, the court shows mercy - Shylock may keep half his wealth, but must convert to Christianity.

Not knowing that 'he' is his wife, Bassanio is induced to give the 'young lawyer' a ring that Portia had given him. Gratiano gives Nerissa (as Portia's 'clerk') a ring that she had given him, and the two women return to Belmont. When the men get back, they are accused of having given the rings to other women. Eventually however, Portia reveals the deception, news arrives that some of Antonio's ships have been recovered, and the company celebrates happily.


Reviews of Merchant of Venice


Merchant of VeniceVoyage to the dark heart of Venice

Review by Rachel Halliburton, London Evening Standard 12 June 2003


A MALIGNANT hatred hangs over Chichester Festival Theatre's sprawling low-lit stage as men in dark suits storm on and flash torches blindingly into the audience, malevolently chorusing, "Jew, Jew, Jew".

Suddenly a roar of pain comes from the wings as Shylock staggers out looking like a wounded bear; holding up a photograph of his daughter who has deserted him.

It is an intense moment in a bold, swaggering production which assetively reclaims this theatre as an epic space from the moment that two processions of people emerge from either side of the stageto launch a flotilla of paper boats on a large V-shaped pool.

Director Gale Edwards's piece travels repeatedly between easy-to-digest picturesqueness and hardcore spit-in-your-face hate - theatrical odyssey which is not without bumps, yet offers a jaggedly interesting panorama of Shakespeare's Venice.

Take, for instance Desmond Barrit, who rather than obviously endowing Shylock with the tortured humanity of his infamous speech presents him as an icy-souled individual animated both by his desire for money and his hatred of Christians. His bitterness is explained by the Christians who unforgivabley despise him with Nazi-like fervour: and it is striking that when Lorenzo and his companions whisk away Jessica, the friends are wearing carnivalesque Jewish noses.

This flint-hard picture of humankind has a shifting backdrop in Alison Chitty's set, which combines with Chris Ellis's lighting designs to fling atmospheric watery shadows across the back of the stage. For the whole of the Venice-themed season, Chitty has doubled the width of the Festivale Theatre stage and created a glass fibre pool filled with 9,800 litres of water; so that each scene change is accompanied by splashing stage staff who move raised platforms.

The designs fluidity extends to sexual identity: interestingly Edward's emphasises subtle layers of homoeroticism, not only between Antonio and Bassanio, but at one moment, between Niamh Cusack's wittily authoritative Portia and Dido Miles's Nerissa, as the latter is shown binding Portia's breasts behind a screen when they are disquising themselves as men.

This is a world where nothing as it seems, and the beauty and the beast of prejudice lurks in every mind.

Some over-caricatured comedy jars, but this is an intriging voyage into the dark heart of Venice. For provocation and boldness, this Merchant will not short-change its audience.


DARKNESS AT THE HEART OF VENICE

Review by Mike Allen, The News Centre 12 June 2003


DARKNESS prevails even on entering the auditorium, with the battleship-grey set dimly lit. This is a production where light flickers and is gone.

The stage is flecked with white sails on Venice’s waterways and with candles in Belmont, and is more brightly but fleetingly illumined by the princes of Morocco and Spain.

All these images created by Merchant of Venice director Gale Edwards and her design team have striking impact.

But the real heart of their work is in the shockingly memorable scene where Christians gather in vicious taunting of Shylock the Jew – knowing he is returning home to find his daughter, Jessica, has gone with his money.

Desmond Barrit plays him here with a silent but tangible sense of foreboding. And that is matched by the way he seems visibly to shrink as he loses his case against his debtor, Antonio. Barrit’s performance is all the more deeply powerful for being unostentatious.

The production has two final, bitter twists in Jessica’s abrupt, remorseful flight from the stage – Alexandra Moen making a sharp impact – and in the isolation of Antonio (a rock-like Philip Quast).

Niamh Cusack’s Portia moves with a teasingly sinuous languor before showing a nice sense of mischief in man’s clothes, but she does not achieve a proper sense of cruelty towards either Shylock or Bassanio.

Indeed, the acting generally does not always sustain the highest level. Ed Stoppard, for example, tends to be swooning of speech as Lorenzo.

So the feeling is of a collection of impressive scenes and images rather than a fully-matured production. But it can become that in time.


Merchant of Venice (Chichester)

Review by Stephen Gilchrist , What's on Stage 12 June 2003 (4 Star rating out of 5)


Chichester's Venetian themed season continues to go great guns with Gale Edwards' elegant and thoughtful production of The Merchant of Venice.This is not one of those in-your face Merchants, challenging the audience to confront its own prejudices, but rather a dark fantasy set in a fairy tale Rialto, reminiscent, in Alison Chitty's brilliant design conception, of all those black and white, 1930's Astaire and Rodgers flicks.

Chitty sets the play on an ever-changing series of platforms over a watery stage, suggesting the canals of Venice. Chris Ellis' magical lighting design evokes a soft, dream-like effect, particularly in the romantic scenes, played in a never-land of twilight with twinkling shafts of light reflecting off the water.

Those who want to find anti-Semitism in Shakespeare's dark comedy of loyalty, friendship, ethnic animosity and money, can no doubt do so, in spades, yet Desmond Barrit's chilling portrayal of the Jew, also manages to convey, not only the anger which provides motivation for Shylock's clamour for blood-justice, but also the underlying reason for it. Barrit's taunting 'I'll have my bond', is met with an equally matched barb from Robert Swann's commanding Duke of Venice: 'We expect a gentle answer- Jew' with the word 'Jew' spat out like a sour grape. Thus is hatred spawned.

It is interesting to contrast Barrit's obdurate moneylender with Michael Feast's Nathan the Wise at the adjoining Minerva Studio. Both are Semitic usurers (as the gentiles would have it) and are regarded as outsiders; but while Shylock attracts scorn and contempt even from those who are obliged to do business with him, Nathan's judgement is widely admired. Nathan's loss of his daughter to a gentile attracts audience sympathy, Shylock's predicament only results in audience revulsion and disgust.

Niamh Cusack's sensible yet skittish Portia comes into her own in the second act, with a courtroom plea, as committed as one could want. Her comedic talents, partnered by Patrick Robinson's Bassanio, are shown to the full in her playful banter with him in the final unravelling of suppressed identity and misunderstood infidelity. Robinson is a fine lothario, although he is sometimes less in command of the undulating verse than the part demands.

This is yet another fine ensemble piece from Chichester's new artistic directors and among the other players, Ed Stoppard is stand-out as a passionate Lorenzo. Philip Quast's eponymous merchant, Antonio, is quietly resigned to his fate, much as a Richard Branson whose stock market bubble has burst, and gives a performance of quiet, integrity. Also outstanding in the smaller role of Gratiano, is the energetic and ultra- cool Geoffrey Streatfeild

Ultimately, though, this is Barrit and Cussacks's evening, and yet another jewel in Chichester's crown


The Merchant of Venice

Review by Benedict Nightingale, The Times 13 June 2003 (4 star rating out of 5)


VERY wet, Venice. But the city and nearby mansion that Alison Chitty has designed for Chichester takes geographic oddity to new extremes.

The stage is partly a dour, grey gymnasium, but mainly a series of paddling pools linked by wooden walkways, which stagehands dressed as lifeguards in baseball hats intermittently readjust and reconfigure. You’d think the Doge was judging a local freestyle contest, not a civil action between two financiers.

It says much for Desmond Barrit’s Shylock that this visual awkwardness doesn’t drown the evening. Indeed, there’s a moment in Gale Edwards’s production when it’s almost a plus. When Shylock discovers that his daughter has absconded with his ducats, a terrible howl goes up from backstage, and on Barrit stumbles, white-faced and pouchy and so stricken that he barely notices that he’s splashing abjectly through the watery murk while everybody else flashes torches in his face, spits and contemptuously choruses “Jew, Jew!”

Thanks also to the modern suits and hats, it’s as if Kristallnacht has been transposed to the Venice lagoon. But the effect of that, combined with Barrit’s fine acting, is of course to unbalance the play. The rule with Merchant of Venice production is this: the more emotionally impressive your Shylock is, the more trivial the love interest becomes and the more displeasing the whole last act seems. A play Shakespeare designed as a romance becomes a sort of botched, aborted tragedy.

But that trade-off seemed worthwhile when Trevor Nunn directed Henry Goodman’s superlative Shylock recently, and it seems so now too.

Barrit doesn’t sentimentalise the character. On the contrary, one is aware from the start of the “ancient grudge” between him and his Christian rival. Philip Quast’s formidably aggressive, insulting Antonio is open about it. Barrit’s Shylock lurks and festers, quietly but intensely dreaming of the revenge that may one day come his way.

Yet you feel his pain, his grief, his humiliation. Seldom have I heard the “hath not a Jew eyes?” speech delivered with simpler, more touching honesty of heart. And seldom have I felt more awed by the play than when Barrit’s proud, implacable, fiercely articulate Shylock finds himself on all fours, agreeing to apostasy in an awful, gulping staccato.

After that, what does the love of Niamh Cusack’s spirited Portia for Patrick Robinson’s likeable Bassanio matter? Or her suspicion of the passionate bond between him and Quast’s Antonio? Or the affection between Ed Stoppard’s appealing young Lorenzo and Alexandra Moen’s sexy, flirtatious but understandably uneasy Jessica? We’ve seen a deeply distressing example of tribal divisions which are still with us. That’s the thing to remember.


Making sense of Shylock

Review by Charles Spencer, The Telegraph 13 June 2003


This is one of the most problematic and unlovable of all Shakespeare's plays. As the late and much-missed Jewish reviewer David Nathan once impatiently put it, "In sooth, I am fed up with The Merchant of Venice".

Scene from merchant of Venice

Nathan disliked both the smugness of the Christians and Shakespeare's contentious portrait of a Jew who distributes his grief evenly between the loss of his daughter and his ducats. Worse still, he deplored the way Shylock becomes a mirror-image of his oppressors, "having forgotten that a Christian bleeds if you cut him just as much as a Jew bleeds if you prick him".

The one director who has made complete sense of the piece in recent years is Trevor Nunn: his psychologically penetrating, novelistically detailed production at the National in 1999 was blessed with a tremendous performance from Henry Goodman as Shylock. Again and again, the staging brought fresh, revealing insights to this over-familiar, yet endlessly perplexing play, most notably in its moving emphasis on the depth of Shylock's Jewish faith.

Gale Edwards's production at Chichester isn't in the same league, but it is nevertheless intelligent, absorbing and notably well acted. It's staged in modern dress, with the Christian characters looking like city slickers, while Alison Chitty's permanent stage design of a huge pool of water bisected by wooden walkways suggests not so much the glory of Venice but a posh water feature at an international company's HQ.

It's all very sleek and knowingly hip, but of course it doesn't quite add up. It's impossible to imagine present-day businessmen, even if they do secretly nurture anti-Semitic feelings, shouting "Jew! Jew! Jew!" and spitting openly at Shylock as they do here. At times, the show is a veritable shower of slobber. And the Christians' hatred of Shylock's usury will seem absurd to those of us heavily indebted to the credit card companies.

Yet there's no doubt that the production is visually arresting - there's a compelling opening sequence in which the entire cast solemnly launch paper ships on the pool to symbolise Venice's trading wealth - and the production has heart as well as style.

I have rarely seen the romantic triangle between Antonio, that unhappiest of repressed homosexuals, Bassanio and Portia, played out with more true feeling. And Desmond Barrit, until now regarded as an essentially comic actor (not to mention a great panto dame), is a deeply moving Shylock.

Barrit has lost weight in recent years but none of his authority, powerfully capturing Shylock's lonely isolation and simmering anger. After watching the Christians push this proud man into the water like schoolyard bullies, one readily understands his desire for revenge, and, as he sits in court, painstakingly sharpening his knife on the sole of his shoe, he looks an implacable figure. But it is his broken humiliation when the judgment goes against him that lingers most potently in the memory, as he grovels on his knees and announces that he is "content", with the drained deadness of a man who has lost his reason for living.

No director can fully marry the tragic depth of Shylock's defeat with the artificial romantic comedy that surrounds it, but there is enchantment as well as pain in this production. The casket scenes are genuinely entertaining, and Niamh Cusack radiates amorous warmth as Portia, as well as cutting a truly authoritative figure in the court scene. Patrick Robinson is an unusually likeable Bassanio, while Philip Quast superbly signals the anguish that lies beneath Antonio's buttoned-up homosexuality. At the end, his isolation reflects Shylock's earlier in the play, and you realise with a start that the two antagonists have far more in common than they ever realised.


The Merchant of Venice

Review by Georgina Brown, Sunday Mail 15 June 2003

Merchant of Venice


City Slickers in dark suits set paper boats afloat in a fragile flotilla across the stage that has been created for this season's Chichester Festival. Ripples of light shimmer on the walls, refracted through the glassy structure that suggests a city's smart financial district.

The contrasts of strenght and weakness, light and dark, solid and liquid, making a striking start to Gale Edwards's modern-dress The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare's problematic play about money, love and racism.

Later, these men will flash torches into our eyes and spit viciously: 'Jew, Jew Jew.' A shocking moment which stirs our sympathy for Desmond Barrit's moving Shylock, a lonely, humourless figure who carries the tragic history of his abused race in his dignified, flinty face.

There's another nice touch when he sits in court soul-lessly sharpening his knife pn the sole of his shoe. When the case goes against him at the end of not especially tense trial scene and he is forced to convert to Christianity, hr falls to his knees, punctured and drained. It's a Goya-esque portrait of a broken man who will not recover.

Edwads production is never as good as it looks and fails to penetrate the surface of this play as Trevor Nunn's definitive 1999 production proved possible.

But the story, which is tricky mix of serious stuff and fairytale romance, emerges with clarity.

The suppressed homosexuality between Philip Quast's sweet Antonio and Patrick Robinson's attractive, slightly shallow Bassanio is well handled and explains why jealous Portia (Niamh Cusack, who is a bit ordinary) wants to test her husband Bassanio's love for her.


The Merchant of Venice Chichester Festival

Review by John Gross, Sunday Telegraph 15 June 2003


It is a common mistake to suppose that the title of The Merchant of Venice refers to Shylock. The merchant is Antonio; the mistake is a tribute to the extent to which Shylock has come to dominate the play. Yet Antonio is a central character too - Shylock's antagonist, victim and counterpart. Things go off-balance if he is pushed to one side.

It is clear from the start that there is no danger of that happening in Gale Edwards' production at the Festival Theatre, Chichester. Philip Quast's Antonio is the most impressive I can recall. He is invested not just with weight - a relatively easy matter, since Quast has a fine rich voice - but with positive heaviness. His depressed feelings are palpable. They are borne with dignity, but he can't help letting you know that they are there.

Never has it seemed more ovbious either, that he is suffering from unfulfilled love for Bassanio. The point is allowed to emerge naturally, without undue fuss. But we are also made to feel that his melancholia is bound up with his high-mindedness. In his case, at least it is a small step from self-denial to self-punishment? He is the impossible idealist, the buisnessman who never charges interest - who is finally ready to embrace martyrdom as his just fate. That he should prove such a strong presence is just as well. If he didn't, the production might have been overwhelmed by Desmond Barrit's Shylock. For Barrit gives a truly notable performance - and even better one, in my opinion, than his RSC Farlsaff.

There is nothing sentimental about it. Even at his best, this is a Shylock who is hard and businesslike. At his worst, he can be as implacable as the text (shaped by centuries of prejudice) requires. But he has his dignity. If he doesn't believe much in other men's goodwill, that isn't what life has taught him. His final "I am not well" is more tragic than many a leavetaking tragedy proper.

Elsewhere the production widely doesn't try to subvert the romantic elements in the play or strip them away. Instead, it accepts that they coexist with the ugly and aggressive elements - which is much more painful. Niamh Cusack makes a spirited Portia, though she seems rather more at home with the witty upper-class prattle of the early scenes than she does in the courtroom. Ed Stoppard and Alexandra Moen cut enough off a dash as Lorenzo and Kessica to make you momentarily forget how disagreeable they can be, Lorenzo especially.

There are some misjudgments. Barrit's "Hath no a Jew eyes?" doesn't need to be punched home with a sudden burst of heavy music, while the wailing melody at the climax of the trial - like something out of Fiddler on the Roof - is even less appropriate. Nor is anything gained by having Shylock splosh around in a canal after Jessica has disappeared. But these are only passing faults; the production as a whole is a great success.


The Merchant of Venice Chichester Festival

Theatre, Chichester review by John Thaxter The Stage 19 June 2003


For its Venetian season, designer Alison Chitty has flooded the Chichester stage. Her high-tech installation presents The Merchant of Venice on movable boardwalks surrounded by a lagoon, creating canals in which the ASMs and half the cast regularly get their feet wet, while Desmond Barrit's Shylock takes an unexpected plunge.

Stage lights cast shimmering patterns. In the prologue the merchants launch paper boats, while Belmont enchantment is made magic with dozens of floating candles. But Gale Edwards' modern-dress production in grey and black will mainly be remembered for its rediscovery of blatant anti-Semitism in Shakespeare's notorious play.

A gang of Venetians armed with powerful flashlights hunt for Jews in the audience or spit on Shylock's gaberdine as they hurl their anti-Semitic insults. Meanwhile, Barrit plays him as an unregenerate villain thirsting for Christian blood with no bid for our sympathy. A single note of regret comes as Alexandra Moen's tender Jessica suddenly departs in tears at the news of her father's downfall, pursued by Ed Stoppard's ardent Lorenzo.

Strong performances come from Philip Quast as Antonio, the cash-strapped merchant, and from Niamh Cusack, delightfully romantic as Portia. She makes a no-nonsense 'Balthasar' in court, qualifying mercy with justice, ably supported by Dido Miles as her lady-in-waiting Nerissa.

If Patrick Robinson as Portia's suitor Bassanio lacks poetic ardour, the passion is absorbed by Barrit's Shylock, a proud outsider whose dreams of revenge end in tragedy.


IMPRESSIVE AND ENTHRALLING

The Merchant of Venice Chichester

Review by Phil Hewiit, Chichester Observer 19 June 2003


From the riotously colourful Gondoliers, the CFT now switches to the overwhelming grey of The Merchant of Venice, an almost monochrome production no less impressive than its multi-coloured counterpart. Where The Gondoliers was bright and breezy, The Merchant is murky, filled with hate and driven by prejudice. Where The Gondoliers trip through the water with love in their hearts, Shylock splashes in it, writhing in his agony.

And so a remarkable star for the summer season ahead starts to emerge. The set, the same basic building block for all the productions, simple and yet astonishingly versatile. You can skim the surface of the water one night; you can plunge into its depths (well metaphorically, at least) the next.

And that's clearly going to be the great virtue of this summer season - a season born of a coherent vision and of a determination to present not a succession of plays, but a thought-out, rounded and challenging whole. Two plays in, and it's clear that this is a set, with its varied paths across the water, on which anything can happen. And therein lies the magic of theatre.

Okay, I am going to quibble about the modern dress. However true the sentiments you voice, however eternal the truths, the details, (lead caskets, pounds of flesh et al) appear deeply daft once you voice them in a suit and tie. But at the same time , it's those grey suits, set against the battleship grey of the set, which help build the menace. Wearing a suit doesn't necessarily make you a civilised - as Antonio and his cronies prove when they vent their hatred and eventually despatch the duped and despised Shylock.

Shylock makes a splash, but he can't sink the prejudices which he faced and which rubbed off to make him the monster who demands his pound of flesh. Desmond Barrit is admirable in the role. Spat at and jeered, he shows a man provoked beyond all imagination, but a man all the same. His delivery of the "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech is beautifully done and deeply moving.

And when Shylock's cruelty is trumped by the Christians' cruelty at the close of the Court scene, you see the shades of grey. No one is right, yet no one is wholly wrong. Gale Edwards' spot-on direction allows the comedy its full flavour, but she also knows when to turn the screw.

Press nights n previous years have occasionally offered slightly undercooked shows. It's clear this won't happen under the theatre's new management. Like The Gondoliers, this is an instantly assured production; like The Gondoliers, it's peopled by actors who have the measure of the CFT stage from the outset.

Niamh Cusack is a fresh, appealing and playful Portia. Cusack fascinatingly brings out her journey to become Shylock's nemesis, as vicious as the rest, before she reverts to type in the coda.

Philip Quast fills the role of Antonio most impressively too. And among the young men about town Geoffrey Streatfield is comfortably the most striking, pumped up with the kind of contempt and mockery you could find in the stands of any Saturday in the football season.

Your heart sinks as the production opens and the company comes on to float paper boats on the water, but you'll soon be enthralled. Overall this is another fine night- not just for this theatre, but for theatre in general.


The Merchant of Venice Chichester Festival

Review by Gareth Carr, Theatreworld Internet Magazine June 2003

Shakespeare at it's best, Chichester at it's best, a better night at the festival theatre I can not remember. The roof lifting audience reaction said it all. This was simply perfect.

This was always going to be a good production. The great Desmond Barrit giving us his Shylock held a tremendous amount of promise. Add to that a great Director, some wonderful designs and a faultless ensemble of actors, Chichester is surely back at the top!

The Venetian theme continues with this year's second main house offering. From the playful Gondoliers we move to the more sinister Merchant of Venice. Contrasting productions indeed, light and dark, quite literally! Set upon the new, rather menacingly named 'Installation' (the Chichester stage has been transformed, doubling in width and has been completely submerged in water for the entire season) Alison Chitty has excelled in using the space to create designs that not only perform with great fluidity (no pun intended!) but are quite magical to look at. Walkways glide through the water, paper boats bob across the stage to represent Antonio's fleet and floating candles aimlessly meander conjuring great romance in Belmont.

With thoughtful direction by Gale Edwards the ensemble all give fine performances. Especially noteworthy are Philip Quast as the troubled Antonio, Dido Miles as the flighty Nerissa and Ed Stoppard as an energetic Lorenzo. Alexandra Moen makes a promising attempt with a pert Jessica. For sheer absurdity surely Ricky Fearon and Paul Leonard must be mentioned as the Princes of Morocco and Arragon.

Patrick Robinson is a solid, if slightly uninteresting Bassanio. Robinson is overshadowed by the glowing performance from Niamh Cusack's Portia. Ms Cusack gives a deliciously airy radiance to the role even if she does fail to generate the presence required for her time played as the male Doctor.

Anyone who has seen Desmond Barrit before in anything from his outrageous Antipholus to his terrifying Trapatchov or his saddened Falstaff will know what great things this man is capable of. Barrit skilfully moves from menace to a tragic figure indeed. As this humbled figure leaves the stage having been denied his bond you feel such sorrow for a man capable of terrible things. Edwards has crowds jeering hatred at poor old Shylock, an alien, resonance indeed in today's world.

This is riveting, terrifying, enchanting and magnificent. Go see.


THE SEAGULL

Anton Chekhov (1896) from 1 AUGUST - 4 OCTOBER 2003

In a new version by Phyllis Nagy (2003) Based on a translation by Helen Molchonoff

"You are a writer and I'm an actress.
We've been drawn into the whirlpool too"

Chekhov's The Seagull mixes surreal comedy and family tragedy to moving effect. It explores the relationship between a young man and his mother by drawing parallels to the relationship between true art and the appearance of art through conformity. It explores the concepts of love and death within the context of theatre and literature. The protagonist of Chekhov's play, Konstantin, searches for his own identity through his writing.

When Konstantin, an idealistic young playwright, writes and stages an experimental play at his family's country estate, friends and relatives convene there to see it performed. Among the audience are his egotistical, temperamental actress mother Arkadina, and her lover, a brilliant novelist named Trigorin. Their presence at the staging is disruptive and dramatic, stirring up profound emotions in all of those present.

Chekhov's first great comedy yearns for change, for a new way of looking at the world, for a new way of falling in love. It revolutionised the Theatre and heralded a new era.

Director: Steven Pimlott
Designer: Alison Chitty
Lighting Designer: Peter Mumford
Sound Designer: Matt Mckenzie
Composer: Jason Carr

Production PhotoCast includes:

Steven Beard
Philip Quast
Ed Stoppard

Characters:

Reviews of The Seagull


Philip Quast and Sheila Gish

The Seagull, Chichester Festival Theatre

Review by Benedict Nightingale, The Times 9 Aug 2003 (4 star rating)


WE SEAGULL aficionados are readying ourselves for Peter Stein’s production of Chekhov’s first major play, which opens the official Edinburgh Festival on Monday; but, 600 miles south, Steven Pimlott has staged a revival well worth a visit.

Chichester’s Arkadina is Sheila Gish, who comes with a medically mandatory eyepatch that gives her a raffish look altogether in keeping with her reading of the role. This diva, you feel, has the arrogance and drive to play anyone from Lady Macbeth to Long John Silver. She’s a formidable, gloriously self-centered exhibitionist, at her best when she’s offhandedly declaring that she looks younger than Kay Curram’s Masha or when she’s forcing her errant lover, Philip Quast’s Trigorin, back into her clutches.

“Willpower’s not my strong suit,” is his doleful response: words typical both of Phyllis Nagy’s entertainingly punchy translation and of the novelist himself. Quast takes Trigorin as far from traditional suavity as any actor I can recall. He’s rumpled, slightly shambling, podgy and, as Arkadina says, rather shy. Add an innate melancholia — you believe him when he says that he dislikes himself and his writing — and you can see why Nina’s uncritical adoration reawakens and excites him.

Nina herself is Alexandra Moen, whose desperation at the end is the more touching because she’s so vivid and radiant at the start, and her Konstantin is Ed Stoppard. Has this young actor the talent, as well as the genes and looks, to shine in the theatre? This Chichester season seems to be proving so, never more than now, for Stoppard catches all the restless excitement of the would-be writer and the lover and much of the chilling despair that comes with the writer’s frustration and the lover’s rejection.

Maybe he and the production could and would go deeper with longer, Stein-style rehearsals. But with Desmond Barrit’s old, self-deprecatingly mournful Sorin among those offering sound support, I’m left with just two tiny complaints. Why the gull in the Hirst-type case that hovers over Konstantin’s desk at the end, and the bit of lake that weirdly stagnates beneath it? If there’s any play that doesn’t need extra symbolism, it is surely The Seagull.


Irreverent approach has Seagull soaring

Review by Charles Spencer, The Telegraphy 11 Aug 2003


Some of my colleagues complain that we see too much Chekhov these days. Personally, I find his great quartet of mature plays inexhaustible, but with three major productions arriving in less than a week - Peter Stein's Seagull opens in Edinburgh on Monday, followed by Katie Mitchell's Three Sisters at the National on Tuesday - even I must concede that it is perhaps possible to have too much of a good thing.

The odd thing about Chekhov is that he seems strangely immune to the directorial GBH routinely dished out to Shakespeare. Almost all Chekhov productions are set in the period in which they were written, and offer detailed naturalism, attractive sets, faithful translations and a scrupulously judged mixture of comedy and heartbreak.

The director Steven Pimlott has evidently decided to shake things up a little. In Phyllis Nagy's remarkably free and colloquial new version of The Seagull she takes a leaf out of Philip Larkin's book and has Masha describing things as a "load of old crap". Konstantin, meanwhile, accuses his mother of appearing in "piss-awful" plays and suggests that her lover, Trigorin, has the remarkable ability to "keep both his balls in the air" - and he isn't referring to balls of the tennis variety.

Alison Chitty's set, meanwhile, is spartan and non-naturalistic, built on a wooden platform over a pool of water, with an emblematic stuffed seagull in a plastic box hanging above the actors like a Damien Hirst exhibit.

But indignation soon yields to admiration. Chekhov productions are in grave danger of settling into a comfortable rut, and it is good to be challenged by such a fresh, irreverent approach. And where it matters, Pimlott and his outstanding company are entirely true to the spirit of the original.

The chronic egotism of the characters is unsparingly nailed, and so too is the precariously thin line between comic self-absorption and life-threatening despair. Pimlott also marvellously captures the sudden changes of mood in the play, when stultifying boredom and lackadaisical conversation give way to sudden outbreaks of emotional and even physical violence, which subside just as quickly as they erupt. Throughout, the show feels alive, spontaneous and true.

This Seagull will be best remembered, however, for Sheila Gish's astonishing - and gutsy - performance as the actress Arkadina. Just a couple of months ago, Gish had an eye removed after suffering cancer of the face, and she takes to the stage wearing a piratical patch. As she has said, her misfortune gives a new spin to this monstrously vain, yet oddly sympathetic character, explaining for instance why Arkadina, a celebrated performer, is now forced to tour the provinces. More importantly, her disfigurement goes a long way towards justifying the character's almost pathological selfishness and the fierceness of her desire to hang on to Trigorin.

Gish plays the role with hilariously luvvieish affectation while also suggesting the desperate neediness that lies beneath. The no-holds-barred row with Trigorin, played with a lovely weak-willed vagueness by Philip Quast, is thrilling to behold, climaxing with Gish undoing his flies and sitting astride him as she showers him with compliments. And her fraught relationship with her troubled son Konstantin, given a wonderfully sympathetic performance by Ed Stoppard, who must know how it feels to have a famous parent, is almost suffocating in its intimate intensity.

Gish's daughter Kay Curram offers a splendidly bolshie, boozy Masha, Alexandra Moen is a heart-catchingly young and vulnerable Nina, while Desmond Barrit gets right to the Chekhovian heart as a delightful old buffer of a Sorin whose increasing physical frailty movingly encapsulates the play's depiction of the ravages of time.

I suspect the legendary Stein will be hard-pushed to out-soar this Seagull in Edinburgh.


Seagull (Chichester)

Review by Stephen Gilchrist, What's on Stage 11th August 2003 (4 star rating)


Perhaps it was a mistake for Steven Pimlott to stage Chichester's new production of The Seagull in the wide-open space of the main house rather than in the adjoining Minerva studio. In Chekhov's dramatic work, almost all of his characters live in closed boxes of one sort or another, both literal and figurative. They meet and clash because they cannot get away from one another. This unceasing claustrophobic atmosphere and how the characters accomplish (or don't) their escape provides the bulk of the dramatic tension.

As with Loveday Ingram's Chichester production of Three Sisters, two years ago, this Seagull demonstrates that the Festival Theatre stage is not conducive to fanning the simmering passions underlying the multiple triangular relationships. Alison Chitty's otherwise excellent water-based installation design for this year's Venetian-themed season now seems to constrain the action, rather than liberate it. There is little sense of Sorin's estate, nor of the lake upon which it's set. Nor was I impressed with the stuffed gull, overhanging the stage as a Damien Hirst-style exhibit. In The Seagull, the symbolism is in the text.

This is essentially a play constructed around unsatisfied longing. Konstantin (Ed Stoppard) longs to be both a successful, radical writer and the lover of skittish Nina (Alexandra Moen). Nina hankers for a career as an actress and a relationship with Trigorin (Philip Quast), whose defining characteristics are his drive to write compulsively, day and night, and a deep concern for his place in the literary canon. And so on, and so forth as Konstantin's kindly uncle, Sorin, might say. He, himself, longs for 'a life' after 28 years as a civil servant.

This new version by Phyllis Nagy also, annoyingly combines elegant Chekhovian language with anachronistic contemporary references. Konstantin opens his play-within-a play, with 'It's showtime', while another character espouses 'That's crap!' Do we really want to hear this in Chekhov?

Of the performances, the otherwise excellent Stoppard gives an effective, if somewhat one-dimensional account, of the intense, marginal-psychotic and Oedipal Konstantin, and particularly impresses in his scenes with Sheila Gish's self-obsessed, reptilian diva, Arkadina. Gish, sporting a dramatic black eye patch, delivers a magnificent performance, sharpening her claws on her son and young Nina, while trying to retain the interest of her lover Trigorin. Moen sparkles with the life force of hope and aspiration early in the play, thus providing her return - two years later, as a disillusioned, unhappily jilted lover and second-rate actress confined to winter rep - all the more poignant.

Above all, Desmond Barrit (whose Shylock so impressed) gives the star turn of the evening. He has a real feeling for the doleful and modest Sorin and conveys so effectively those long and languid rural-Russian days and nights. And what a treat to see him sharing the stage with this season's other standout, Michael Feast as the disturbingly, uncaring doctor, Dorn.

Despite some inconstancy in style and approach, the performances empower Chichester's final, main-house production of the season so that this Seagull flies high, straight and true.


SHEILA HAS THE SEAGULL SOARING TO NEW HEIGHTS

Review by Sue Gilson, Chichester Observer 14 August 2003


One of the hottest evenings of the year, the prospect of an emotionally-draining night at the theatre was not altogether a water-watering one. But the laugh-out-loud comedy, fine acting and cool, Zen-like set of director Steven Pimlott's The Seagull was a breath of frash air.

Chekhov may ofter be thought of as overwrought and laden with intellectually-taxing monologues, but this new version by Phyllis Nagy of his play about the grand themes of love and art, which revolutionised the theatre in its time, brought out the wit and was hugely entertaining.

There was still the emotion and hand-wringing, of course, particularly from the charmingly dishevelled Ed Stoppard, who lurched from Byroin-like torment to quiet despair as struggling writer Konstantin.

And Alexandra Moen's transformation from radiant and optimistic would-be starlet Nina to a bruised and confused young woman having to face life's realities was suitably shocking.

But the humour, and great interaction between the characters, balanced this superbly.

Alison Chitty's modernist set, with the lake almost like a Japanese water feature underneath the stage and the seagull hung overhead in a perspex box, Damien Hirst-like, was refreshing too and an antidote to a world of Russian icons and dusty old books.

Sheila Gish's portayal of acterss Arkadina was awe-inspiring on two levels. This was a big, brash, go-for-it performance with Gish captivating the audience with her sheer presence, comic timing and some gorgeous gowns. And the fact that, just two months ago, she underwent surgery to remove her right eye when cancer was diagnosed, makes her performance all the more extraordinary with the eyepatch she now wears lending her an air of decandence and sexiness.

Other notable performances come from Desmond Barrit as Sorin, the old man with a twinkle in his eye, and Gish's daughter Kay Curram showing her pedigree as the young madam of the withering put down Masha.


The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov

Now playing in repertory at Chichester Festival Theatre until October 4

Review by Ellen Holbrook, Theatreworld Internet Magazine Aug 2003


Chekhov's classic celebrates Chichester's successful summer season.

Like most of the season's productions, this too has been given a modern injection by Phyllis Nagy this year. Chekhov last had a hand in the script in 1896, but the two versions remain close.

Chekhov brings together the temperamental characters of actors and writers, showing what jealousy and success can do. A new play causes change amongst family and friends and although a comedy the words are heavy providing good contrasts.

The set was simplistic, a lakeside setting with a wooden terrace. We, the audience were the lake making us feel the cast were talking about us. Unlike other Seagull productions this one chose not to make the set symbolic representing the dead seagull. This made a refreshing change and let us think of the metaphors involved.

A seagull did hang above the stage in a glass case, a subtle reminder what the play means.

Numerous actors could be recognized from other productions from the season making it hard to distinguish their characters. It can't be easy performing different roles at the same time and getting them to be completely different. No one performer with regard to acting ability stood out, they all annoyed me to some extent but only due to their dramatic over the top characters. Sheila Gish however should be commended as only recently she had a tumour removed and lost her left eye. She claims wearing an eye patch will open up other roles irrelevant to her before! Her first instinct was to go and hide, but the second to go and act! You could see acting was there for her as her counselor, and to act alongside her daughter Kay Curram must have been an added bonus.

Worth seeing, and to those people I have spoken to who are weary of Chekhov, this is for you! It can change your mind about those 'boring classics'


Now That’s What I Call Chekhov!

Review by Michael Coveney, The Daily Mail 15 Aug 2003 (4 star rating)


Sitting through the plodding Seagull at Edinburgh only renews the many pleasures of a rival production at Chichester, where Steven Pimlott’s revival is fast, funny and entirely well lit. And whereas Stein bases his own text on an old fashioned 1923 translation by Constance Garnett, both Chichester and the National Theatre (in Three Sisters) have done Chekhov proud with marvellous, lucid and eminently speakable new modern versions by Phyllis Nagy and Nicholas Wright.

Chichester’s Arkadina played by Sheila Gish, stately as a galleon, gorgeous with self-esteem, voluptuous in her pursuit of Philip Quast’s laid-back Trigorin.

This is surely the bravest performance of the year, too. Miss Gish has lately had one eye removed after suffering a cancerous tumour. But her eye-patch becomes positive accessory to her demeanour, which is fierce, elegant and irresistibly vain. She leads a superb cast, with Michael Feast and Desmond Barrit truly outstandingas , respectively, Dorin and Sorin Ed Stoppard is a notable, frenetic Konstantin.


We would like to thank Maria, Jo and Richard for taking the time to provide us with some of these reviews.

Back stage pictures of some of the cast from Chichester.


We would like to thank the cast of The Merchant of Venice for allowing the following pictures to be taken for the website.

Patrick RobinsonDesmond BarritEd Stoppard and Dido MilesCast relaxingStephen VenturaChristian Patterson

Keiran HillPhilip and NiamhPhilip and DidoPhilipPhilip


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