AustLit

'The Seagull is Chekhov's attempt to put life itself on the stage so we can see it for the accidental, nonsensical and achingly beautiful muddle that it is. It's a play in which nobody gets what they want (however desperately they crave it) and meanwhile everyone keeps picnicking and drinking and seeing the summer out, with the odd home-made play for diversion.

Kostya longs to be a groundbreaking writer and hankers after the full attention of his neighbour, Nina. He is desperate for his mother to like his play but she finds it tedious and talks the whole way through. Nina aspires to be an actress and for the richness of a creative life, tantalisingly located beyond her fingertips. Trigorin is a prolific writer but he desires to be a good one. Masha is continually conscious of Kostya and pours spirits down her throat to stifle the love that he doesn't even notice.' Source: /www.belvoir.com.au/ (Sighted 17/06/2011).

'When famed but fading theatrical diva Arkadina brings her entourage ­– including her writer lover Trigorin and tortured, unconventional playwright son Konstantin – to seek solace at her brother’s country hideaway, she unwittingly sets light to a powderkeg of repressed emotions as flames of passion are lit and extinguished and love triangles mesh together and drift apart.'

Source: QTC.

'In a country house beside a lake, love triangles, intrigue and thwarted egos run amok. The glamorous, ageing thespian Irina Arkadina has arrived for a romantic getaway with her much younger lover, the novelist Boris. Irina’s son Constantine, a struggling playwright, is besotted with a beautiful ingénue from the next house over, Nina. But when a flirtation blossoms between Nina and Boris, jealousy, ambition and a lack of phone signal throw the whole party into various states of crisis.

'Director Imara Savage last beguiled STC audiences with her revelatory production Saint Joan in 2018. In The Seagull, Savage and a thrilling cast featuring Arka Das, Michael Denkha, Harry Greenwood, Markus Hamilton, Mabel Li, Sean O’Shea, Toby Schmitz, Megan Wilding and Brigid Zengeni, will take Upton’s wry and offbeat sense of humour to new heights in this ambitious investigation of the power of art and the complicated personalities that make it happen.'

Source: STC.