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The Sea Gull. Opening its fourth season, Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre presented Anton Tchekov's forlorn, splendid play which brought fame to the Moscow Art Theatre. On the shores of a Russian lake the tragedies were inter twined -where Nina (Josephine Hutchinson) was happy as the sea gulls that lay along the breeze; where Konstantin (Robert Ross) loved her and wrote boyishly lofty plays; where Novelist Trigorin (Jacob Ben-Ami) went to rest and fish. When Nina bothered him with fatuous, youthful admiration, Trigorin took the trouble to describe his craft -the incessant, harrowing compulsion to write, the reflection that people would pause above his grave to remark: "He was charming and talented ... but not as great as Turgenev."
It was inevitable that Trigorin and Nina should love. After the death of their child, he deserted her. Konstantin shot himself.
By any theatrical formula Trigorin would be called a villain. But Tchekov's comparison transcends all formulas. The novelist emerges as the sorrowful exemplar of all great artistry, doomed by its egocentrism and insatiable need for new contacts to chastise itself and sadden others. These things Tchekov knew well, for Trigorin is largely self-portraiture.
The brooding, bearded figure of Jacob Ben-Ami, playing his first Civic Repertory part, evoked all the solemnities of the role. His speech was slow, with the de liberation of men who choose words carefully because they deal in profundities. Incisive, striking, despite the general excellence of her cast, was Eva Le Gallienne as the glum steward's daughter who wanted Konstantin. She and her company illumined their antiquated downtown playhouse, where top price is $1.50, with lustrous, high enterprise.
Philadelphia. Bribery and bullet-proof vests are important in this melodrama which tells things about Philadelphia which everyone suspects, and is rather ponderous in the telling.
Cape Cod Follies. From little-theatrical Dennis, Mass., a new group of youthful troupers have taken their summertime antics to the Broadway stage. Often amateurish, they nevertheless provide several infectious interludes, notably those in which Peggy Ellis plays a piano, Peter Joray imitates Queen Victoria painting gulls at Brighton, Eugene O'Neill is burlesqued with such lines as: "My plays are different, dirty and distinguished. . . . Go to bed mother and stop gazing beyond the horizon at that there dynamo."
Hawk Island. On a gruesome isle off the New England coast a jokester announces that he has killed a man. When the mock victim is actually slain, the deed is attributed to the jokester. This swift, complex variation on the classic "wolf-wolf" theme should appeal to not-too- discriminating mystery addicts.