Review: London stage show «Nina» stages auditions for Chekhov's «The Seagull»
Battersea Arts Centre in London is staging «Nina», a play that follows women auditioning for a role in Chekhov's «The Seagull». The Guardian's reviewer finds it a tense, harrowing study of male power over actors.
A new production called «Nina» is on at Battersea Arts Centre in London. It was written and directed by Caroline Williams, with Deborah Pearson as co-director. The Guardian has published a review describing it as a discomforting, rage-fuelled piece about men and power.
What the show is about
The action takes place during auditions. Women are competing for the role of Nina, the young aspiring actor in Anton Chekhov's play «The Seagull». The process is run by a director named Goran (Rowan Polonski), who is making an experimental staging that uses live-feed cameras. The review calls him a sombrely pretentious wunderkind. He dismisses the need for an intimacy coordinator while claiming credit for having one in the room.
The women auditioning for Nina are played by Maya Bartley O'Dea, Nina Bowers, Samantha Begeman and Gemma Barnett. Writer Tim (Joseph Payne) watches from the side and reads in for the role of Konstantin.
Mounting pressure
Goran's demands grow more invasive as the auditions go on. He starts with small questions and moves to commands, such as telling the women to describe their trauma and then show it. The actors are eager to please and to get work, and he has the power to make them stars.
The reviewer singles out a birth scene played by Bowers and a scene played by Begeman that is projected large across the stage and is described as almost too hard to watch. In the reviewer's view, the show demands that the audience bear witness.
Verdict
The reviewer sees the final switch of power as an artistic act of wish fulfilment that rings hollow against the world the show has built. The direction is judged most compelling in its bleak brutality, and the review ends by asking why any woman would want to be an actor.
