The Factory Theatre presents The Seagull at the Pleasance Theatre

The Factory Theatre presents The Seagull at the Pleasance Theatre

11 May, 2009
by: SpoonfedMeg

The members of the Factory Theatre group face the audience as if facing a firing squad and I wonder what they know that I don't. Apparently not a great deal: “none of the actors have learned the lines,” Alex Hassle, co-founder of the Factory group, announces. “And,” he recaps for those who didn't see the coin toss to decide roles moments before, “none of them knew what parts they were playing until you did.” There is a murmur through the Pleasance Theatre where a large crowd has gathered for tonight's production of Chekhov's The Seagull. I shudder. I've had this nightmare before.

But this isn't a nightmare by a long shot. This is the Seagull Project, the Factory's newest piece of improvisational theatre and quite a different sort of production from last year's Hamlet which used the unabridged script but incorporated props provided by the audience, the crazier the better. Tonight's The Seagull has no script at all but is entirely improvised based on the actors’ studies of the play and characters. They have foregone costumes, props and character names, using the actor’s real names instead. While at first this sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, what I instead witness is a completely unique and surprisingly powerful production.

The story of The Seagull opens with a play within the play, so the first ten minutes are a bit confusing. Various members of the cast, who in plain clothes are still hard to distinguish from any other person in the room, wander around the theatre discussing the imminent beginning of the play. Particularly confused is an elderly woman who loudly asks the actors to speak up and then, with the help of the cast, realises she's come to the wrong play. Yet once the preliminaries are out of the way, the show kicks off in earnest, building both in pace and confidence.

Although the improv leads to some awkward pauses and phrasings, the strength of this format is that anecdotes, emotions and situations are not based on fictional dialogue but drawn from real experiences. This can be seen in the actions of Tim Evans, also co-founder of the Factory and tonight playing the role of the young playwright and son of a famous actress. Tim has almost certainly had a row with his mother before, and draws on his own experiences for an on-stage fight that is much more rich and real than anything he could perform with someone else's words. The scene is one of the most powerful in the play.

The biggest issue is length. The show is long, just under three hours, and feels it. A benefit of a scripted story is that time is very carefully managed. Characters are given stage time and dialogue that reveals enough about them to explain their motives and story but not so much that their story becomes mundane or even muddled. Some scenes tonight drag on with idle chatter between characters while others feel abrupt and more like a summary than a performance.

Issues aside, The Seagull Project is a brilliant and daring combination of improvisation, reality TV-style acting and classic theatre: what I see tonight will never be recreated in exactly the same way. The raw emotions and feeling that I am part of something completely unique lend a power that overcomes any of the shortcomings inherent in the style of the performance.

The Seagull Project will continue as long as the Factory Theatre has an interested audience. For more information on The Factory and to find out about any upcoming performances, visit http://www.factorytheatre.co.uk/.

SpoonfedMeg