The Seagull is arguably Anton Chekhov’s most exploited play. It’s been staged and subverted all over the world, from productions in its original Russian script to Pan Pan Theatre’s derisive The Seagull and Other Birds, which premiered in the Dublin Theatre Festival two years ago. This year, the classic modernist play makes a return to the festival stage under yet another guise.
Corn Exchange’s The Seagull is a new translation written by Michael West (Conservatory, Dubliners) and directed by Annie Ryan. The new adaptation is a contemporary re-imagining of the play, which traditionally takes place in a pre-revolutionary Russian on a country estate. It tells the ultimately tragic story of an assortment of people collected on the estate during one hot summer: an aspiring young writer, the amateur actress he claims to adore, an older celebrated author and his ageing lover, teachers and gentility and all in-between. The Corn Exchange’s press copy emphasises the theme of love and unrequited longing that runs through the problematic yet pitiable characters of the story, rather than the more academic focus on themes of new art clashing with the old.
One particularly interesting deviation by Corn Exchange is the alteration of Constantin, the emotional young writer, to a female Constance. Constantin in the original text is the quintessential privileged young man, mistaking sense of love with a sense of entitlement and battling with a complicated relationship to his mother. It will be worth a trip to The Gaiety even to see how this traditionally gendered role has been addressed by writer and director. At a time when Irish theatre is trying to address serious issues of gender imbalance, the casting choice couldn’t be more pertinent.
The play is running until October 16th at the Gaiety Theatre. Tickets can be purchased through The Gaiety or Dublin Theatre Festival box office.
