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Theater 

Sometimes all the elements of stagecraft—direction, acting and design—come together to create a show that’s seamlessly right, and that’s what’s happening now with Cal Shakespeare’s production of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” at the Bruns outdoor theater in the Orinda hills. 

It’s an enchanting production. 

You can stumble out of a play trying to figure out what went wrong, but as you float out of this one, you just want to credit everyone who blended the elements so well. First prize has to go to director Jonathan Moscone, whose firm but light touch works magic on Chekhov’s delicate tragicomedy. Choosing Tom Stoppard’s recent sturdy adaptation, in which characters often quote Shakespeare, Moscone does Prospero-like work. Most of “The Seagull’s” characters whine, fuss and fail, but the play is never a pain because Moscone brings out its lovely, bittersweet flavor. Failure and loss are mingled with wisdom and become gently, exquisitely moving. 

Chekhov called “The Seagull,” a comedy in four acts, but it’s a comedy in the sense that Dante’s Commedia is one: an examination of people as fallible fools rather than heroes or buffoons, though unlike Dante, who could be vindictive, Chekhov is infinitely forgiving. 

“The Seagull” plays out (no surprise) on a country estate far from Moscow, where a disparate band—old and young, aristocrat and servant, writer and doctor—reveal their souls in a fugue of longing and disillusion. The members of this band are the actress, Irina Arkadina, who has come with her writer-lover, Trigorin, to her brother’s estate. Here her son, Konstantin, is about to put on a play he wrote that is starring a local girl, Nina. There are servants: the estate manager Shamraev, his wife Polina, and his daughter Masha. Two local people, Dorn, a doctor, and Medvedenko, a schoolteacher, drop by. 

Unrequited love drifts on the summer air like pollen. Polina loves Dorn. Medvedenko loves Masha, but she loves Konstantin, who loves Nina who loves Trigorin. Irina loves (or at least needs) Trigorin, who can’t resist Nina. 

Though it’s a preposterous tangle, our laughter is tempered by sympathy. After all, who of us would be out of place in a Chekhov play? 

Regret compounds the unhappiness: the elderly brother, Sorin, wanted to be a writer, and Tirgorin, who is a writer, regrets how the profession obsesses him. Meanwhile the young are busy manufacturing future regrets: a loveless marriage, a mistaken career, while talk of art fills the air. Must old theatrical styles make way for new? In one exquisitely funny moment Irina cries out during her son’s muddled play, “Am I the only one who isn’t getting this?” Who hasn’t said or thought the same? 

The pleasures of the production are many, beginning with John Coyne’s Chagallesque set of pink-tinted boards, punctuated by spindly trees and enhanced by a lovely golden moon hauled up by ropes. Katherine Roth provides handsome Edwardian suits, gowns and hats, while Christopher Akerlind nicely lights summer days and autumn evenings, and Cliff Carruthers adds thumping music or delicate sound. 

Fitting the choral nature of the play, the cast does splendid ensemble work. Kandis Chapell is imperious, self-centered Irina. Charles Dean is comically crusty Sorin. Sean Dugan reveals the torment in young Konstantin, who loves and longs intensely. Susannah Schulman brings a rich eagerness to Nina, crying, “I’m drawn here, like a seagull drawn to the lake!” Dan Hiatt has a pleasing ease as Dorn. James Carpenter is a tense, uneasy Trigorin. Emily Ackerman is hilarious as practical but melodramatic Masha (“I’m in mourning for my life,” she moans.) Brian Keith Russell is a warmly blustering Shamraev, and Sam Misner creates the self-effacing Medvenko. 

“What could be more weary than the sweet weariness of life in the country?” Dorn asks. What could be sweeter than an evening of near-perfect theater in midsummer? 

Cal Shakespeare provides the latter with its poignant production of “The Seagull.”