Ambition in Topanga paradise: Anton Chekhov and John Galsworthy at Theatricum Botanicum

Los Angeles Times

16-07-2025

'The Seagull: Malibu' and the seldom-revived 'Strife,' two ambitious offerings in Theatricum Botanicum's outdoor season, are reset in the American past.
Ellen Geer, the director, calls her version of Anton Chekhov's play, 'a retelling.' She relocates 'The Seagull,' as a program note specifies and her production flamboyantly conveys, 'to the self-centered Me Generation of the '70s that followed the social upheaval of the '60s.' Malibu, a California world unto its own, hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Santa Monica Mountains on the other, sets up a groovy, glamorous equivalent to the backwater country setting of Chekhov's original, in which all of the characters seem to be suffering from terminal ennui.
'Strife,' John Galsworthy's 1909 social drama about the human cost of a deadlock between management and labor, is transferred from the England-Wales border to Pennsylvania of the 1890s. The play, directed by Ellen Geer and Willow Geer, isn't adapted in the freehanded way of 'The Seagull: Malibu,' and the change of locale doesn't always seem natural.
The production's opening scene is slightly disorienting. The directors, called to an emergency meeting at the home of the chairman of the board of the American Steel Corp., have the haughty mien of British aristocrats. Later, at the freezing cold abode of one of the leaders of the strike, the impoverished scene takes on unmistakable Dickensian notes. There are a fair number of Irish accents in the mix, but I wouldn't have been surprised if one of the actors broke out his best cockney.
'The Seagull: Malibu' isn't always consistent in setting up the time period, but the production's larkish approach is infectious. Arkadina (Susan Angelo) plays the self-absorbed actress mother who sold out to Hollywood. Defensive about her age, she's even more prickly about the condescending attitude of her would-be avant-garde playwright son, Constantine (Christopher Glenn Gilstrap), who basically thinks she's a B-movie hack.
Gilstrap's Constantine looks more like a future yacht rock frontman than a theatrical renegade. Angelo's Arkadina seems destined to have her career resurrected in the next decade by a recurring role on either 'Dallas' or 'Dynasty.' The charged Oedipal dynamics between them are vividly fleshed out.
Willow Geer plays Masha, the Chekhov character who insouciantly declares that she's in mourning for her life. Her Masha is a pothead and sloppy self-dramatizing drunk, hopelessly in love with Constantine, who only has eyes for Nina (Caroline Quigley). Masha confides her discontent to Dr. Dore (Daniel Reichert), a Gestalt therapist who, like Chekhov's more traditional Dr. Dorn, has an empirical worldview that stands in stark contrast to the romantic dreaminess of everyone else at the estate.
Thad (Tim Halligan), Arkadina's rechristened brother, suffers from fragile health and a sketchy backstory. Halligan, however, gives the character definition, especially when advocating for his nephew and risking the wrath of his volatile, penny-pinching sister. Trigger (Rajiv Shah) is the new version of Trigorin, the established writer who, as Arkadina's younger lover, resists becoming her property even as he enjoys the perks of their celebrity relationship.
The boldly amusing and good-natured production makes the most of the fading California hippie era. The final act, unfortunately, is dreadfully acted. Quigley's Nina is a delight in the play's early going, all innocence and starry-eyed enthusiasm. But there appears to be no artistic growth when she returns to encounter a still-lovesick Constantine. Quigley's acting is as melodramatic and artificial as Nina's was said to be before her travails and losses transformed her talent.
This isn't the production's only failure of subtlety, but it's surely the most consequential. Still, if you can cope with a deflating finale, there's much to enjoy in this update of 'The Seagull,' not least the glorious Topanga summer night backdrop, which translates Chekhov's setting into a rustic West Coast paradise.
I can't remember ever having seen a Galsworthy play, so I was grateful for Theatrium Botanicum's vision in producing 'Strife.' Awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1932, Galsworthy is better known for his novels than his plays. (The 1967 BBC television adaptation of his Forsyte family chronicles brought him immense posthumous acclaim.)
'Strife' is an intelligent thesis play, not on the verbal or theatrical level of George Bernard Shaw's sparkling comedy of ideas but impressive all the same for its complexity of argument and compassionate determination to understand all sides of a problem. The play is especially resonant at this moment when workers are treated like items in a budget that can be erased without regard for human consequences.
There's a rousing speech about the God of Capital, 'a white-faced, stony-hearted monster' that says, ''I'm very sorry for you, poor fellows — you have a cruel time of it, I know,' but will not give you one dollar of its dividends to help you have a better time.' These words are spoken by David Roberts (Gerald C. Rivers), a labor hard-liner and rabble-rouser, who is the ideological enemy and (mirror image of) John Anthony (Franc Ross), the chairman of American Steel who refuses to give an inch to the demands of the workers.
In portraying these intractable figures in equivalent moral terms, Galsworthy reveals, if not his privileged background, then his muddled thinking on economic justice. But this large-cast drama (one of the reasons it's rarely produced today) provides a broad spectrum of human experience, adding depth and nuance to what is undeniably a vigorous debate.
Enid Underwood (Emily Bridges), Mr. Anthony's married daughter, is desperate to help her ailing servant, Annie Roberts (Earnestine Phillips), whose health has been destroyed since her husband, David, has been on strike. Enid's sympathy is strong, but her class allegiance is stronger, setting up an intriguing character study that takes us into the heart of the societal dilemma Galsworthy diligently dissects.
The acting is often at the level of community theater — broad, strident and overly exuberant. Galsworthy, to judge by this revival, seems to be working far outside the tradition of realism. I wish the directors had reined in some of the hoary excesses of the performers, but I felt fortunate to experience a play that might not be an indelible classic but is too incisive to be forgotten.