Caroline Quentin soars in Chekhov classic that’s had its wings clipped, giving a hilarious and strangely sympathetic turn as the aristocratic star of stage, Irina Arkadina in The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov; James Brining’s first production as artistic director of Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum.
Written in 1895, at a time when Russian theatre was undergoing a transformation (melodrama, then the staple of the stage, was slowly being eschewed in favour of a more ‘modern’ and realistic style of characterisation), The Seagull, which finds followers of both schools of thought addressing the question, ‘What is theatre?’, was at the vanguard of that change.
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