I Am a Beagle, No That's Not It

This is the third time I am pulling out this “joke” tonight—and it could very well fall flat here, also for the third time.

There is a famous line in one of the final monologues of THE SEAGULL, uttered by Nina who has returned from the provinces as a pretty failed actress, “I’m a seagull, no that’s not it, I am an actress.”

Back in college, so many actresses would do that monologue in class and usually it was very painful to watch. So I turned to one of my friends, after a particularly bad rendition, and said, “I am a beagle, no that’s not it, I am a mattress.”

Of course, it’s just a rhyming thing and is not high comedy. But to me, the humor lies in the dada quality of picking any old rhyming, useless words. This absurd joke relates to how ridiculous it is that all these untrained college actresses had the nerve to just march into the middle of class and insist upon performing this very difficult monologue. Vanity, surely. But then, at nineteen I auditioned for Juilliard as Biff from DEATH OF A SALESMAN, something best left to straight men, who once played football, over thirty years old and not after a full weekend of being high on mushrooms.

Okay, if you have to explain a joke that much, it clearly is a bad one.

Tonight, we went to see THE SEAGULL based on the most glowing theatre review I have ever read in The New Yorker.

It was beautiful. But it was over directed. It was mostly British actors, from a British production and it seemed like a British play. The British spirit is nothing like the Russian spirit. The play hit me as a very cold thing. Though, Ann Dowd as Polina, suffering from unrequited love, which is a huge theme throughout, delivers reality beautifully. Perhaps because the character is from a lower class? Or because I am from a lower class?

Zoe Kazan, as Masha, understood the humor the best. Of course, it’s the funniest part. But she was lovely.

I felt Kristin Scott Thomas overdid it as Arkadina.

And the director, Ian Rickson, let almost nothing get out of control. Would have been nice if something did.