In November 1937 Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, then American theater’s preeminent acting couple, called rehearsals for Chekhov’s The Seagull. They’d cast a young, little-known actress named Uta Hagen in a lead role and invited her to their 60-acre Wisconsin estate, Ten Chimneys, to work on the play. Jeffrey Hatcher’s new play Ten Chimneys, currently onstage at Northlight Theatre, focuses almost entirely on those few days. After two and a quarter hours of stage time, it’s difficult to say why.
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One could argue there was a lot at stake for both the Lunts and Hagen. The Lunts’ exquisite naturalistic technique earned them near-universal acclaim (Lee Strasberg would proclaim, “The Lunts are the Method”). But by 1937 they began to feel trapped in “Lunt vehicles,” light comedies and romances that threatened to turn them into irrelevant lightweights. Their Sea Gull might prove they were serious actors. Eighteen-year-old Hagen had just made a splash in her first professional role as Ophelia in Eva Le Gallienne’s groundbreaking Hamlet. Now she would make her Broadway debut in a production that would draw massive critical interest.
The playwright maintains an insular focus on this tight-knit group, invoking Chekhov’s strategy in The Seagull. And he works overtime to draw parallels between that modern masterpiece and his own modest effort, an act of singular theatrical hubris. But of the many brilliant ideas in The Seagull he overlooks the most obvious one. Chekhov’s characters live through a few seemingly pedestrian days that change their lives irrevocably. Hatcher’s characters live through a few days that seem pretty much like any other. If there are serious, long-lasting consequences, he hasn’t dramatized them.
Hatcher ends with an odd coda, as the characters reconvene at Ten Chimneys just after World War II has ended. He gives them poignant speeches and meaningful stares, but he omits key information. Lunt and Fontanne spent the previous three years in England helping with the war effort (among other things, Lunt volunteered anonymously at St. George’s Hospital emptying bedpans). They toured a propagandistic play, performing even when a bomb hit the theater one night and literally blew an actor out of the building. Surely those were days that forever altered their lives. It’s a shame we hear nothing about them.
Through 4/15: Check with theater for showtimes, Northlight Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie, 847-673-6300, northlight.org, $25-$60.
