Relations with Russia may be icier than ever, but mutual antipathy has never dented our love for Chekhov. To all intents and purposes the man wrote four plays, and they’re never far from our stages. This luxury celebrity revival of The Seagull comes just a couple of years after Jamie Lloyd’s version, runs concurrent to the Globe’s Three Sisters, less than a year after the Donmar’s Cherry Orchard, and opens just as Andrew Scott’s superb one-man Vanya moves to Broadway.
The key factor here is our endless capacity for making Chekhov’s plays all about us. This is not your baboushka’s Chekhov: it begins with Zachary Hart’s luxuriantly Brummie accented Simon driving onto the stage on a quad bike, indulging in a bit of audience banter, plugging in an electric guitar and launching into a heartfelt rendition of Billy Bragg’s cult 1983 song The Milkman of Human Kindness.
As Simon mentions in his opening patter, the show is directed by the great German Thomas Ostermeier, artistic director of Berlin’s hugely influential Schaubühne theatre. It’s quite the coup for producers Wessex Grove: the first show Ostermeier has ever created in this country, following last year’s well-received English language premiere of his classic take on An Enemy of the People.
Okay, it’s not as big a coup as bagging Blanchett, or indeed most of a dementedly stacked cast: Emma Corrin! Tom Burke! Kodi Smit-McPhee! Tanya Reynolds! Really, I could just list all the actors here!
But it’s Ostermeier’s vision that defines, delights and frustrates. In a recent interview with the Guardian he noted that he’d directed this play multiple times and felt no reverence towards Chekhov, but saw the play as a work for ‘a great group of actors’.
That’s what he’s got here, no question. But despite those whimsical opening flourishes and an eye-catching set from Magda Willi that consists of a huge thicket of rushes that twitch enticingly whenever new characters are about to make an entrance, there’s a definite sense that Ostermeier – billed as co-adaptor of the show along with playwright Duncan Macmillan – has been happy to let his production be led by the actors rather than a singular directorial vision.
That leads to an enjoyable but somewhat indulgent three-hour show, in which the Seagull’s considerable ambiguities (is it a comedy? A tragedy? Both?) often feel pushed to their limit in all directions. In particular we have the odd situation where huge name Blanchett is essentially playing a light relief role, while Burke and Corrin are atypically earnest and wholesome as Arkadina’s novelist lover Trigorin and Nina, the ambitious young actress who catches his eye.
Which is fair enough: Arkadina is absurd and OTT, and in her performance Blanchett has a ball satirising what I would assume are the celebrity circles she herself hangs out in. With her eye-popping wardrobe, weapons-grade cattiness, absurd lack of self-consciousness and occasional flashes of a messiah complex, she’s like Blanche DuBois crossed with Patsy from Ab Fab crossed with Bono. The character was always a portrait of insecurity, but Blanchett, Macmillan and Ostermeier have added to that a withering but very funny send up of actual celebrity, something that didn’t really exist in Chekhov’s day.
She’s great, and very funny. But it’s hard to really place her with Burke’s Trigorin, a thoughtful, intense man whose main point of chemistry with Arkadina seems to be his obliviousness to her shenanigans. It’s hardly a surprise that he falls for Emma Corrin’s delightful Nina: gangly and androgynous, she’s hardly the stereotypical hot young thing consumed by her ambition, but rather a serious and intelligent woman who has a genuine meeting of minds with Trigorin as they launch into a colossally long chat about the nature of art and celebrity (NB Corrin is non-binary but as with many of their roles, Nina is a very much a she). There’s an unusual generosity in the play’s treatment of these two characters that’s refreshing – certainly I didn’t feel grubby in investing in their relationship.
Beyond the core love triangle there’s a fantastic supporting cast, all pulling in their own directions. Smit-McPhee is fun as Arkadina’s overly serious artiste son Konstantin – he’s a more classic interpretation of the role than many of the performances here, but it’s a very credible turn for the Let the Right One In and The Road child screen star’s first stage performance. There are some deliciously on-the-nose lines as he walks to the end of the little catwalk that protrudes into the audience and slags off overpriced contemporary theatre to the well-heeled Barbican crowd surrounding him. Reynolds has a black belt in awkwardness , and is very entertaining as posh goth Masha. Hart is tremendous as the boundlessly affable, inexplicably Billy Bragg-loving Simon. Really, everyone’s great.
But I couldn’t shake the sense that Ostermeier had overly enabled the cast, allowing the performances to pull apart from each other tonally. The cool aesthetic and lashings of meta irony do keep it reasonably coherent. But ultimately allowing everyone the space to do their own thing limits chemistry – though Burke and Corrin really are terrific – and also makes it looooong, with odd contrasts between the nimbler, funnier bits and the sections that are really long chats about the nature of art.
If you want to see Cate Blanchett and some other world-class actors have a ball in an alternately irreverent and emotional three-hour production of The Seagull, directed by a genius who has clearly directed the play a few too many times… then you’re in for a treat.
If you want to see an exquisitely sculpted production of a classic play with an emotionally devastating, awards-bait performance from its big-name star… then this isn’t the bird you’re looking for.
How to get Seagull tickets
The Seagull is sold out, and what tickets there are on secondary retail sites are incredibly expensive. However there is one good bet, albeit luck based: a daily lottery via TodayTix distributes decent £35 tickets on the day of each show.
