How to perform Chekhov as Britain stockpiles missiles against his homeland? Thomas Ostermeier and Duncan Macmillan’s adaptation takes inspiration from the author’s visit to a Russian penal colony in 1890, recording floggings, prostitution, disease and starving children.
On his return he wrote this dark romp about the futile dreams of bourgeois love. Ostermeier and Macmillan find the savagery in his text – crops are failing, the country is starving, estates are on the edge of war and destruction.
Their updated script plays with the fourth wall, adds Billy Bragg, teases arts funding, and stresses the pointlessness of theatre in a world facing catastrophe.
Into it all walks Cate Blanchett’s Irina – a fading, vain catastrophe in her own right. Blanchett’s performance is breathtaking, self-mockingly hammed up until she has to beg her lover not to leave her for Emma Corrin’s 20-year-old Nina.
The play pivots from comedy to crushing tragedy on her line: “I am only an ordinary woman.”
The Seagull is at the Barbican Theatre in London until Saturday 5 April.
