Add Maria Tucci to the list of superlative Arkadinas who've distinguished Anton Chekhov's so-called comedy, The Seagull, since it premiered disastrously in 1896. Then put an asterisk by her name, since Tucci is not playing Chekhov's actual Irina Nicolaevna Arkadin, she's a character called Maria in A Seagull in the Hamptons, now at Princeton's McCarter Theatre, which artistic director Emily Mann has "freely adapted" from the original -- and has also directed extremely well.


But don't be misled. This is pure Chekhov, down to the last audible sigh uttered by people for whom indefinable despair is like humidity -- and they're all languishing from the intensity of it. What Mann has don[...]