Anton Chekhov's life featured in play

Taiwan theater director Stan Lai's latest productions, I Take Your Hand in Mine and The Seagull (above),are a tribute to Anton Chekhov. Photos by Li Yan / China Daily

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The Seagull, one of the quartet of great Chekhov theater pieces, is much less accessible. To someone not familiar with theatrical conventions, it may appear placid, devoid of dramatic tension. It is full of ostensibly inconsequential chatter while whatever little drama that remains is pushed off the stage, such as the travail of the ingenue and the suicide of the aspiring writer.

The Seagull has been staged in China many times, most notably in 1991 by the Beijing People's Art Theater. A Russian director was hired for the job and a who's-who in China's showbiz was cast, including then budding and now marquee names like Pu Cunxin and Xu Fan as Konstantin and Nina respectively. It was not at all different from the style we associate with this pantheon of theatrical arts partly because it was initially built on the Soviet model anyway.

In 2013, Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center hired Russian director Adolf Shapiro for a production of Uncle Vanya. He was claimed to be a "true descendent" of the Stanislavski school of theatrical style. The irony is, you'll find plenty of proof in the biographical play I Take Your Hand in Mine that Chekhov was often not satisfied with Stanislavski's treatment in the first place.

The Russian artists may have brought more authenticity, but it takes a special genius to distill the exquisiteness of Chekhov. Lai demonstrated a stroke of that genius by placing the story of The Seagull in a 1930s Shanghai suburb. Yet, every line of the original play is preserved-even some dialogue that sounds like translations from a foreign language.

For those not familiar with Russian history or literature, the essence of the play, especially its nuances and tone, begins to surface. What used to appear as outlandish now makes perfect sense. The undertones are no longer totally lost.

Prior to this production, The Seagull received a dramatically revised treatment from Yang Shen, who, in 2009, put on a small-theater version to mock China's theater scene and those who dream of squeezing into the circle. It was considered a personal statement couched in a Chekhov classic.