California Seagull

California Seagull is a high-school production that updates Chekhov’s The Seagull. Chekhov’s comments on unrequited love and the nature of art have been lifted and re-planted into the movie industry of modern-day California.

The satire of the piece centres on undermining the wholesale aestheticism of Hollywood. This critical bent is explored most fully through the mother-son relationship between Irene, the ageing icon, and Cameron, her creative son. Irene, size 0 and heavily tanned, is a triumph of aesthetic construction and is indicative of the disillusionment found within the film industry; her son, Cameron, a floppy haired youth, flails and flounces his way through a representation of an artist still awaiting mainstream acceptance.

The aim of this piece is to prove that the themes of unrequited love and artistic struggle are as applicable to the modern day as they were to Chekhov’s Russia. However, this message is largely lost amidst teenage angst and hyperbolic acting. The show opens with Maddy, a Converse-clad grunger, neurotically wailing at a man who offers a rather wooden "but I love you." This scene begins a trend of over-dramatic exits and hair-tugging tantrums that continues throughout. The fault lies largely with the script, which is peppered with clunky existentialism—"who am I?" "What am I?"—and is not helped by the musical refrain of "this is my ridiculous life." One gets the sense of this play being existentialism for idiots.

Strong performances from Daniel O’Neill and Annaliese Kirby should be congratulated, but they are not enough to salvage this otherwise unsuccessful update.