Arkadina (Indira Varma) is a famous actress whose expectation of being the centre of attention extends to her family life. She brings with her her young on-off boyfriend, the equally famous but much more taciturn novelist Trigorin (Tom Rhys Harries.)
The story's inciting event is a play-within-a-play, a highly experimental work written by Konstantin and performed by the neighbour he's desperately in love with, Nina (Emilia Clarke.) Arkadina dismisses it as a nonsense long before it's finished; between the repeated blows to his confidence from his own mother, and the unrequited love consuming him, Konstantin is set on a tragic path. So is Nina, thanks to her attraction to the casually destructive Trigorin.
These broad sweeps of Chekhov's story are still present and correct, but if Reiss' version already takes some liberties with the original, Lloyd takes a further knife to it. In fact, half the opening act is cut completely: The introduction to the ten characters is gone, as is the performance of the unintentionally comic play. The cast have been gradually taking their places on plastic chairs on Soutra Gilmour's chipboard box set as the audience arrive, lined up to stare at Clarke, and the action opens as Arkadina stands up to call an end to her son's play.
The stripped-back aesthetic is far from reserved for the text and the design, as the playing style is also strictly minimalist. The entire cast stays onstage almost throughout, the progression between acts marked only by them rearranging their chairs, if at all. In many ways the performances are very impressive, in how much emotion they manage to convey through hushed tones - whispering, muttering, sulking, if Chekhov's work is in large part about ennui this is magnified in Lloyd's staging, the supporting cast sitting around listlessly, bored by the dramas the characters currently centre-stage consider all-consuming.
The editing makes the story very much about the central quartet of Konstantin, Nina, Arkadina and Trigorin, to the detriment of the rest of the strong cast: The working-class characters are largely relegated to comic relief, which they provide strongly, notably from Sophie Wu's stroppy teenager take on Masha, and Jason Barnett's permanently-seething Shamrayev. Mika Onyx Johnson's dull schoolmaster Medvedenko gets the odd moment, while Polina is so edited down it feels a real waste of Sara Powell. As the story leans more into tragedy it leaves them on the sidelines.
Instead the focus becomes a very modern one of fame versus genuine contribution to the world, which the central four all embody in some way: Nina longs in a rather vague way for fame as the solution to all her problems, while Arkadina, the living embodiment of the words "don't you know who I am?" weaponises it, using it to browbeat everyone to her will. For Trigorin, fame triggers imposter syndrome: Writing is a kind of compulsion for him, and the stories he produces are popular, but not considered great literature; it blinds him to the fact that to readers like Nina this doesn't matter, and he's genuinely enriching people's lives. And when Konstantin finally gains fame as a playwright, it's of a kind that will only exacerbate his insecurities, as a cult figure, rabidly beloved by his fans but a punchline in the press.
It's an interesting deconstruction of the play's themes but a bit ironic given the production's sold on Clarke's fame: For a lot of Game of Thrones fans in the audience (getting a bonus in the form of Varma,) this will be their first Chekhov, and very possibly their last. I always feel like I'm being patronising when I wonder if first-timers can follow a play I already know well, but you can't argue with the amount of people I heard in the interval saying they couldn't follow it. Because of all the cutting, this interval comes after the first three acts, leaving the last to take a more leisurely pace. I was actively listening out for the references to how much time had passed, but with the scenes running into each other I'm not sure everyone realised there was a gap at all - certainly not everyone noticed one of the main characters shooting himself, which you'd think would be of some note at least. I'd be very surprised if anyone who didn't already know, realised from Nina's final appearance that she's likely to go off and die of malnutrition and exposure.
I think the key to Lloyd's approach lies in the way Dr Dorn (Gerald Kyd) remembers Konstantin's play: It moved him, but he didn't understand it. That seems to be the intention here for The Seagull itself, and maybe explains why we never see the first act's "new theatrical form," since that's the whole play now. I can't deny there were a lot of moments that did move me, but the relentlessly low-key speaking style does get a bit monotonous by the end - I got distracted by the fact that Harries appears to have decided to get multiple tattoos, but only on his left foot. And while I found a lot to like, one of the things that first got me into theatre was its ability to tell stories, and the storytelling element is - deliberately, I think - very much missing here, meaning I was moved by moments, but dissatisfied with the whole.
The Seagull by Anton Chekhov in a version by Anya Reiss is booking until the 10th of September at the Harold Pinter Theatre.
Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
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