Theatre Review: The Seagull at Dublin Theatre Festival: The Gaiety

3/5

Spirited and kooky in places, Corn Exchange’s new Chekov revival gets off to a cracking start. Sadly, the production loses its momentum in the second half, however, as it struggles with the restrictions of Chekov’s original.

In the late 19th century, Chekov’s notion of a theatre grounded in inaction and stasis, in which the drama emerges from character psychology, was provocative and revolutionary. In contemporary revivals of his work, however, this ‘style’ frequently comes across as simply static and inert, and burdened with scenarios and verbal exchanges that today seem — following a long century of Freud — like clichéd psychobabble.