dramaturgy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dramaturgy) wrote2009-12-15 06:04 pm
dramaturgy) wrote2009-12-15 06:04 pm
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So having never seen Katie Mitchell's production of The Seagull at the National (I was about half a year too late, DAMNIT), I have to say that I probably shouldn't talk, but I read this (rather negative) review:
As her loveless, emotionally disturbed son, Ben Whishaw makes a wilfully cool and composed Konstantin. Perhaps the fact that Crimp has cut his role down to raw basics explains why Whishaw expresses such muted grief or suicidal despair. He no more matures or changes than does Hattie Morahan's dazzled but insufficiently harrowed Nina.
Okay I could buy the point about Nina, and it's been awhile since I've actually read the play in depth so feel free to correct, but isn't the point of Konstantin that he DOESN'T change and he ISN'T going to change? He can't be anything but he is, and turns out that's not so good for him as an artist, and isn't that what drives him to take his own life?
Eh. I always do this. I always want to defend meanies who look down on something I like/likely would have liked. I am very picky when it comes to my work, and easy to please when it comes to everyone else.
(I have the first paragraph, and that's the easiest part, right? Right?)
As her loveless, emotionally disturbed son, Ben Whishaw makes a wilfully cool and composed Konstantin. Perhaps the fact that Crimp has cut his role down to raw basics explains why Whishaw expresses such muted grief or suicidal despair. He no more matures or changes than does Hattie Morahan's dazzled but insufficiently harrowed Nina.
Okay I could buy the point about Nina, and it's been awhile since I've actually read the play in depth so feel free to correct, but isn't the point of Konstantin that he DOESN'T change and he ISN'T going to change? He can't be anything but he is, and turns out that's not so good for him as an artist, and isn't that what drives him to take his own life?
Eh. I always do this. I always want to defend meanies who look down on something I like/likely would have liked. I am very picky when it comes to my work, and easy to please when it comes to everyone else.
(I have the first paragraph, and that's the easiest part, right? Right?)
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I don't know that calm and low key is the order for Konstantin, but he should be a tortured young man, not a raging four year old. I wonder if the critic was taking "cool and composed" at face value and missing subtleties or if I just want there to think it was the facade of something a bit more tempestuous.
You know. Of the performance that I didn't see. XD