The room is pitch black with only the faint titters of anticipating theatergoers breaking the silence until, suddenly, smoke pours out from the stage in a bath of blue light and reveals two figures taking to the stage. So began the opening performance of “The Seagull,” written by Anton Chekhov and directed by a guest artist, Genevieve Bennett.

The play depicts the story of a once-famous but aging actress, Irina Arkadina, and her son, Konstantin Treplev, when she returns to her Russian estate in the country with her younger lover, a popular writer, Boris Trigorin. Among the main family is Masha whom loves Konstantin, Pjotr whom loves Masha, and Medvedenko whom seems to love no one, but never lets anyone use the farm’s horses. It doesn’t take much imagination to see where the emotions of the characters would cause some tension. The tale mixes the tragedy of unrequited love with a sharp, biting sense of humor performed wonderfully by Hamline actors.

With the very first scene, the stage witnessed a proposal of love, closely followed by a harsh rejection, and so began the show of sloppy, overlapping love triangles that left some characters amusingly sarcastic and others bitterly broken. The stage itself used a basic backdrop of plants built around the edges and back to create a depth in which the scene itself nestled back into the country landscape, yet utilized a rotating stage for a behind-the-scenes flair. Then, balanced but powerful lighting techniques controlled the weather, time and mood of each scene against the rather modest prop decorations to create a simplistic, pure picture of where these characters lived out their drama. Though used sparsely, the complimenting sound effects each brought out specific, tangible elements in the play without overshadowing the true gem of the stage: the actors and actresses.

Whether a character for humor or drama, every person on stage brought with them a pure sense of whom they played. Though some had more dramatic heels to fill, such as Lily Lenarz Hooyman, who played actress Irina herself and some were quieter storms, such as Carlye Felton, who played the lovestruck, slightly alcoholic Masha, each character came to life on the stage. Arguably, the most gripping of these lives was that of young Konstantin. Desperately in love with Nina, struggling to pursue his passion for writing and jealous of Trigorin who has everything he seems to want in life, Konstantin carried a weight of struggles through the play. The audience followed him in his difficult journey until the end of the play when a raw performance of acting brought a visible moment of realization to the young man. So beautifully portrayed was the internal emotions on stage, that when the final scene fell to black, someone in the audience muttered to their seat partner, “I could just see his hope dying.”

With a heavy play like “The Seagull,” the threat of appearing as hard to comprehend as the play’s original written format loomed overhead, but when brought to life with carefully crafted sound, lighting and props that let the characters shine, the play’s basic elements of love and life could come through.

“The Seagull” is playing at Hamline’s Anne Simley Theatre through Nov. 14 with tickets ranging from $2-8. More information can be found by contacting the Theatre Box Office at 651-523-2905 or through email at tickets@hamline.edu.