Although the official Theater and Literary Committee approved The Sea Gull for performance, its highly critical report might have forewarned Chekhov, if he had had the opportunity to read it, of difficulties ahead. The report stated that the play was a literary effort; that it contained a few characters drawn with refined humor, such as Medve- denko, Sorin, and Shamraev; and that in several scenes it achieved sincere dramatic quality. The report then went on to point out that the play "suffers from substantial defects." Its "symbolism, or more correctly its Ibsenism . . . running through the whole play like a red thread," was sharply condemned as ineffective and unnecessary. Faults were also found in the characterizations of Treplev, Trigorin, Arkadina, and Masha, and a looseness in the structure of the play was criticized.
Certainly the "tons of love," which Chekhov had mentioned to Suvorin, complicating the lives of four women and six men in four separate triangle situations, must have baffled the members of the committee, who were used to relatively simple, conventional plays. With a suicide at the end, they probably wondered why Chekhov described the work as a comedy, for the nontragic frustration that leads Treplev to take his life no doubt evaded them. They sought for the direct appeal and blatant theatricality of typical comedy, and found neither in The Sea Gull. Further, their report gives no indication that they perceived the subtleties and nuances of the play or the true significance of its symbolism. Nor is any mention made of the pervasive Ilamlet motif, or the indirect appeal of the emotionally evocative dialogue. And the eloquent implications of the silences, the wonderfully effective mood of fused lyricism and wit, as well as the unanticipated truth that emerges from these characters variously disappointed by life, were dramatic innovations beyond the experience of this committee.
Chekhov himself sensed the artistic challenge which The Sea Gull would present to a contemporary audience, and at first he was impatient for the trial. One must not be hypnotized by the routine of life, he told Potapenko, who was in raptures over the freshness and originality of the play but worried by its flouting of dramatic conventions. Life was a jumble, Chekhov explained, in which the profound existed along with the trivial, the great with the insignificant, the tragic with the ridiculous, and that was the way it ought to be represented on the stage. And to do this, he declared, echoing Treplev in the play, new forms were needed. After some correspondence with E. M. Karpov, a mediocre dramatist and director of the Alexandrinsky Theater, who sought his approval on casting, Chekhov realized that he must go to Petersburg well in advance of the opening night to discuss these matters and attend rehearsals. "The thirst for fame" drew him to the northern capital, he wrote Leontiev-Shcheglov, and he left for Petersburg on October 7.
The next day Chekhov sat in the dark Alexandrinsky Theater and watched a rehearsal of The Sea Gull, the fourth that had taken place. He was mortified by what he saw. Nor did the fifth or sixth rehearsals show any improvement. And at this late point, only five days before the opening, the distinguished but temperamental actress, Mariya Savina, decided that she was unsuited to the role of Nina and rejected it — the very role on which Chekhov thought the whole play depended. In her place stepped the young, dedicated Vera Kommissarzhevskaya, who soon bccame one of Russia's most celebrated actresses. At that time she was slight of build, with large, luminous dark eyes, thin, tense but lovely features, and an extraordinary musical voice.
At the sixth rehearsal Chekhov observed with dismay that several of the cast were absent, a few still read their lines from scripts, and only an assistant director was present to guide the actors. The Sea Gull was just another play to them, and it was clear that the limited Karpov, in his staging and instructions to the actors, had failed to understand the structural innovations of the play, its poetic mood, and the tender and refined delineation of character. Shocked by the stilted, traditional intonation of the actors, their false emphasis in reading lines, and their lack of comprehension of the roles they were portraying, Chekhov frequently interrupted the rehearsal to explain the significance of a phrase or discuss the real essence of a characterization. "The chief thing, my dears, is that theatricality is unnecessary," he would repeat. "Really unnecessary. It is entirely simple. They are all simple, ordinary people." But, deeply discouraged as he left the theater, he said to Potapenko, who had accompanied him to the rehearsaclass="underline" "Nothing will come of it. It is boring, uninteresting, and not needed by anyone. The actors are not interested, which means that the public will not be interested." Suvorin, with whom Chekhov was staying, noted in his diary that his guest had begun again to cough up blood.
Chekhov seriously contemplated withdrawing his play. He wrote Masha to say that it was going badly, and though he had urged her and Lika to make the trip from Moscow for the opening night, he now tried to discouragc them. At the seventh rehearsal, however, things miraculously changed. Perhaps inspired by the superb acting of Kommissarzhev- skaya, who with her fragile little figure and great eyes set in a tragic, childlike face seemed the very incarnation of Nina, the whole cast caught fire. People attending the rehearsal wept at the tender scenes. Chekhov was elated and dashed off a note to brother Misha filled with hope for his play. But the miracle failed to repeat itself at the last two rehearsals, including the dress one, which he attended. The cast had slipped back into its uninspired, hesitant performance of the earlier rehearsals. All was dull, flat and gray.
Suvorin noted in his diary on October 16: "Yesterday, after the dress rehearsal, he [Chekhov] was disturbed about the play and wanted to withdraw it. He was very unhappy over the performance. In truth, it was very mediocre." On the morning of the seventeenth, Chekhov met his sister at the railroad station. He looked ill, coughed constantly, and was in low spirits. She tried to cheer him up, but he persisted in complaining about the rehearsals and the fact that the actors did not know their parts.
That night, at the opening performance of The Sea Gull, Chekhov found the theater full. But this was not a typical Alexandrinsky audience for a premiere. Many of them were clerks, shopkeepers, merchants, and officers. They had come because the performance had been advertised as a benefit for their favorite, Levkeeva, a jolly, buxom actress who provoked laughter the moment she appeared on the stage in the homey, comic roles in which she specialized. Why she had selected for her benefit The Sea Gull, in which there was no suitable part for her, was a mystery. Ordinarily, actors and actresses so honored were at pains to choose a play which they knew in advance would delight their admirers. And no doubt Levkeeva's fans now anticipated a hilarious, conventional farce.9 In any event, they were quite incapable of appreciating what they did see. Though a number of Chekhov's friends were present and, as it turned out, not a few of his envious literary rivals, the regular patrons of the Alexandrinsky, the intelligentsia, who might have been sympathetic to the innovations represented by The Sea Gull, did not attend in any number; they ordinarily kept away from benefit performances with their high-priced tickets, preferring to see the same play some other night.
Though the opening performance of The Sea Gull lacked inspired staging, and some of the cast, because they reacted negatively to its unconventional approach, played their roles unconvincingly, there was no wholesale attempt to undermine the performance. As the first scene unfolded, however, the audience sat in strained, silent incomprehension over this strange language spoken by the actors and these odd characters who seemed to move about like somnambulists. But when Nina (Kommissarzhevskaya) began the well-known monologue: "Men and beasts, lions, eagles, and partridges, antlered deer ..." a sharp laugh was heard and loud talking broke out. At the end of the first act the slight, scattered applause was lost in the vociferous booing and whistling. And as the play wore on the noise became scandalous. Levkeeva's fans, ill-bred for the most part and feeling cheated by this incomprehensible play, roared with laughter at the most solemn moments and turned their backs on the stage to chat with friends. Leontiev-Shcheglov recalls the person next to him asking loudly, when Treplev placed the slain sea gull at the feet of Nina: "Why does this Apollonsky (Treplev) carry that dead duck around with him? Really, what nonsense this is!" The actors, bewildered by the uproar and inattention, fell into a semi- demoralized state. At intermission indignant comments were heard in the corridors and foyer: "Symbolic trash!" "Why doesn't he stick to his short stories?" Writers and journalists eagerly gathered in little knots to vent their venomous spite. All agreed that nothing quite like this failure had ever happened before in the Russian theater.