The Seagull

The Seagull description

According to Wikipedia almost 20 notable productions of The Seagull have thrilled audiences around the world since 2001, including a 2015 Indian production in Hyderabad. This time around it stars Cate Blanchett and Tom Burke in a limited run at The Barbican.

The Seagull by Anton Chekhov is a classic masterpiece and one of the playwright’s four most important plays. It explores the themes of tragedy, love, obsession, loneliness, jealousy and regret.

A young woman is desperate to escape her boring, ordinary life and find fame. A young man dreams obsessively about the woman he’s in love with. A successful writer can’t figure out why he isn’t fulfilled by his achievements. And a powerful actress wants time to stand still.

The antics of the writer Boris Trigorin, an innocent young woman called Nina, the ageing actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the playwright Konstantin Tréplev will delight you. When they come together in a remote country house their dreams are ultimately destroyed, their hopes smashed and their hearts broken. And finally, when it becomes obvious there's nowhere else to turn, they turn on each other, a fittingly dramatic end to the fierce romantic and artistic battles between four very different people.

A new production - and a return to The Seagull for Blanchett

This is a new production by Thomas Ostermeier but it is familiar territory to Blanchett, who played Nina in a 1997 production of The Seagull with the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney, directed by Neil Armfield. It marks the actor’s first time on stage at the Barbican since 2012, when she appeared there in Big and Small, and it’s on stage for a limited London run.

The stars of the show

Cate Blanchett’s numerous movie roles since 1994 include Thank God He Met Lizzie, The Talented Mr Ripley, The Gift, The Missing, and roles in Lord of The Rings movies. She has delighted us in all sorts of TV shows and her many impressive stage roles include The Present, The Maids, When We Have Sufficiently Tortured Each Other, and Uncle Vanya.

Tom Burke has played varied TV and movie roles as well as appearing on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company, at Shakespeare's Globe, as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet in 2004, at the Old Vic in Noël Coward's Design for Living with Andrew Scott and Lisa Dillon, and with Ian McKellen in The Cut during 2006. He has also appeared in Creditors at the Donmar Warehouse and The Doctor's Dilemma at the National Theatre.

Playing at Barbican Theatre (venue info)

Performance Times for The Seagull