[seagull] ★★★

Let’s talk chairs.

But wait, you might be thinking. [seagull] has nada to do with Ionesco. It’s very obviously an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s beloved tragicomedy about the romantic and artistic conflicts among a group of disaffected characters stuck together on a Russian estate.

True, and yes, that’s exactly what this Edinburgh International Festival presentation of the UK premiere of this Toneelhuis/Olympique Dramatique production is. And it’s unique, a Flemish translation by Stijn Van Opstal, Scarlet Tummers, Tom Dewispelaere, and Francis Geeraert, performed almost entirely in sign language by a mix of deaf and hearing actors.

Few words are actually spoken, and director Van Opstal and his fellow adaptors have made the interesting choice to pull the audience more deeply into the non-hearing world as each of Chekhov’s four acts progresses. Language becomes truncated with each act; the translations in the third act are in syntax with what’s being signed, and at the start of the fourth act a quick summation of what’s to come is given, then performed with no words until the show’s conclusion.

The innovation and ambition is apparent, but if language is secondary, why is the show still 2.5 hours in duration? And if the production’s indulgent length weren’t an issue, the fact that there’s no intermission is.

Which brings us back to chairs. Half of the audience at Studio Theatre had the venue’s lovely, comfortable seating. But because this staging has the audience on two sides, looking at the action and each other, it necessitates an additional section of seating that consists of regular chairs that were brought in.

Did anyone from the production team sit in those chairs for 2.5 straight hours? Highly doubtful. Had they done so, they’d have realized that asking audience members to do so without an intermission was unreasonable. From mutterings heard post-show, it was evident that most of chair-half of the house was miserably uncomfortable by show’s end. People weren’t talking about the staging or the performers; they were trying to get feeling back in their legs and bums.