Opinion | ‘The Seagull/Woodstock, NY’ Review: Chekhov’s Fun, With Parker Posey

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The birch trees are banished, and in their place blooms a riotous garden of profanity and sexual frankness in “The Seagull/Woodstock, NY,” Thomas Bradshaw’s blazingly funny but also emotionally acute contemporary adaptation of the Chekhov classic.

Bill Sage, Ato Essandoh, Daniel Oreskes, Parker Posey, David Cale, Amy Stiller and Hari Nef$38-$79, 917-935-4242, closes April 9

This New Group production, directed with emotionally lucid precision by Scott Elliott, features a superlative cast, with Parker Posey, one of our most distinctive comic actors, shining in the central role of Irene, an actress with a faded career who nonetheless has a plushly upholstered ego in which she happily cocoons herself.

This turns out to be a fourth-wall-obliterating monologue that contains musings on the third rail that is “the N word” and then takes a peculiar twist to become a manifesto on the merits of masturbation. Only Irene flies into dudgeon—“Haven’t you heard that Black Lives Matter?” she scolds—but it is Irene whom Kevin most desperately wants to impress.

But the dramatic effect is similar. We writhe along with the characters as they trample over one another’s tenderest feelings. The antagonism between the prosperous farmer Darren and his wife, Pauline , is downright vicious, for instance, as is the savage fight between Irene and Kevin. Him: “You’re despicable. Choosing a pompous ass who cheats on you over your own son.” Her: “You need to be committed.

 

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