By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2

WHEN? Friday 28 February 2025, runs through 5 April 2025 RUNTIME: 180 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

Zachary Hart (The Constituent, Old Vic) plays the besotted Simon Medvedenko, arrives onstage on a quad bike with a guitar and performs Billy Bragg‘s The Milkman Of Human Kindness and we’re already in floods of tears because, like Chekhov’s gun, we know what’s to come.

• Read on for reasons including how Blanchett’s Arkadina is extraordinarily monstrous without unbalancing this production

The Seagull is 1 of our favourite plays although we’re not sure why. We think it might be because of the ridiculousness of the character of the pompous actress and mother Arkadina who Blanchett plays here and we’ve reviewed her predecessors including Indira Varma, Lesley Sharp and Anna Chancellor.

It’s a part which could be so over the top and although, like Madonna paying tribute to those who followed her, Blanchett’s Arkadina wears a T-shirt bearing her own name and sparkling showbiz trousers, she never unbalances the terrific ensemble.

Director Thomas Ostermeir (An Enemy Of The People, Duke Of York’s Theatre) is not renowned for his understatedness and declares in the programme he’s ‘not a big fan of’ Chekhov’s which is perhaps how he can bring such a forensic eye to this tale of people in love with the wrong people against a stagey backdrop as family and friends gather at a lake to see Arkadina’s sensitive son’s Konstantin’s (Kodi Smit-McPhee film The Power Of the Dog) new play.

It’s a moment of true vulnerability as Konstantin strives for a new theatrical form, here underscored by the cast donning ridiculous virtual reality headsets, starring the woman he loves, Emma Corrin’s (Orlando, Garrick Theatre) naive yet pure Nina.

Duncan Macmillan’s (People, Places and Things, Wyndham’s Theatre) adaptation gives the women at the heart of the story greater agency. Masha is given life by Tanya Reynolds (pictured below A Mirror, Almeida) and, although she is the initially unwelcome object of troubadour Simon’s affections, she responds by wearing black because ‘she is in mourning for her life’.

Arkadina’s new younger lover Trigorin, played hilariously vacuously by Tom Burke (Rosmersholm, Duke Of York’s Theatre), seizes on the inspirational Nina and the story-within-a-story about the titular doomed seagull is set in motion.

Elsewhere Jason Watkins (Frozen, Theatre Royal Haymarket) has some of the show’s best zingers even from his deathbed during an interminable game of bingo as the energy begins to sag.

Golden Brown by The Stranglers features heavily in the soundtrack and there can’t have been a dry eye in the house when Simon returned to sing Billy Bragg’s The Man In The Iron Mask.

Microphones feature but do not dominate as they might have done if Jamie Lloyd was at the directorial helm and Blanchett’s outrageous Arkadina is given space to demonstrate how grotesquely funny and insensitive she can be.

Corrin’s Nina (pictured above) is perhaps the play’s tragic heart and here while always watchable they are better than we have ever seen them.

What we won’t forget is quite how moving this Seagull was and yet fizzingly funny at the same time.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Barbican Centre Tickets
• Have you seen a Cate Blanchett show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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