Fine cast livens 'Seagull' update

In Emily Mann's take on

The Seagull

, arguably the greatest of Anton Chekhov's major plays, Mother Russia is not even on the radar.

A Seagull in the Hamptons

is all modern and all-American, set on the ritzy beach where high-end New Yorkers play.

There the play's literary elite fret about health care and pooh-pooh Meryl Streep, to curry favor with the vaunted actress who owns the beach estate where her son and brother gather with their friends and lovers.

A Seagull in the Hamptons

at Princeton's McCarter Theatre, where Mann is artistic director and resident playwright, completes her cycle of adaptations of Chekhov's major works. She directs it, too, in a classy production that mirrors the pacing - sometimes riveting, sometimes subdued - of his play.

Mann mines all the Russian master's

Seagull

themes and, as with the original, it is easier to admire

A Seagull in the Hamptons

than to be moved by it. We get angst, frustration, the pain of unrequited love, and lots of bursting into sometimes stagy tears.

We get the intellectual sparring between old and young: The mother's Broadway roles are popular but despised by her son, a budding playwright who arrogantly insists his own works blaze with meaning, even though he can't rub two decent thoughts together.

And we also see the humor in all this, with a cast that knows how to deliver a line that comments both on the characters and on their situations. Mann's play and her direction easily demonstrate her intimacy with the original work: You see

A Seagull in the Hamptons

as a group of people awash in contemporary American troubles, but you feel it as if it's

The Seagull.

The first half takes place on Eugene Lee's striking beachfront set, with a large model of the family's home toward the rear of the stage. In the second half, the set is reversed: We're inside the house, looking off toward the beach at the rear.

Mann has assembled a fine cast. As I admired the ease with which they bring off her

Seagull,

I wanted to see them also perform the original, in the corresponding characters. Maria Tucci plays the actress with a perfect regal gait and sensibility. Stark Sands, who was superb in Broadway's

Journey's End

last season, is excellent here as her troubled son. His girlfriend, an aspiring actress, is played by Morena Baccarin with an intriguing vulnerability.

The veteran stage actor Brian Murray is charming in a smart performance as the actress' newly retired brother. So is another Broadway vet, Larry Pine, as a family friend. Laura Heisler and David Andrew Macdonald - two actors from last season's

Coram Boy

, which deserved a much longer Broadway run than it had - are convincing in their parts. They all perform Emily Mann's play, but they summon the spirit of Anton Chekhov throughout.

Presented by McCarter Theatre Center at Berlind Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, through June 8. Tickets: $15-$49. Information: 609-258-2787 or

» READ MORE: www.mccarter.org

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