What’s the point of theatre? It’s the question that director Thomas Ostermeier - once the enfant terrible of German theatre, who famously said that directors over 40 should stop working, himself now 56 - reckons with in this roguish, self-referential and spectacular production of Chekhov’s play about theatre. Oh, and it’s got a performance from Cate Blanchett that may well be the best of the year. ‘Who wants a bit of Chekhov?’ Zachary Hart’s dirty-overalled Medvedenko asks as he bashes out a Billy Bragg number on guitar.
Oh god, is this going to be cool Chekhov? Well sort of, but Ostermeier’s also taking the piss. Yes he has actors randomly take to microphones, with some talking directly to the audience, others seemingly unaware we’re there. But with Duncan Macmillan’s new - largely faithful, often very beautiful - adaptation, it becomes a punch up between The Seagull done traditionally and done as contemporary theatre, sliding between the two, unable to settle.
That’s what we get from Magda Willi’s set too: realist and abstract in one, with a thicket of tall wheat stalks in the middle of the stage, where the actors magically appear, surrounded by a curved blank wall. The great Arkadina (Blanchett) is a vain Hollywood actress, Konstantin (Kodi Smit-McPhee) a frustrated nepo baby writer who can’t escape the shadow of his attention-hoovering mother, while Trigorin is a writer who puts himself on the same shelf as Ian McEwan. With great humour but, more.
