The seagull; Punch – evaluation

Fresh from the coast I carefully went to Thomas Ostermeier’s production of The seagull. How could this bird be a picture of vulnerability if the seagulls are predators on today’s beaches that fall like bankers and fall on passers -by? In addition, it is so difficult to take off the crucial scene in which Nina – revealing her lover, revealing her ambitions in ruins – to describe yourself a seagull. The tragedy often looks like listening. This raises the question of why critics suspect the famous actor Arkadina of falseity because of her profession, while Nina, the failed actor, is viewed as simply sincerely.

And yet in this new adaptation of Ostermeier and Duncan MacMillan, Czechows drama from 1896 with interest, even if he brutally pressed into the present: Sun Lounger! Quad bikes! This is the best that ever plays through writers and a real questioning of the drama. Even better, since David Hare, the author of a very good version, argued, it is a piece about change and struggle in which theater is “only the metaphor”.

Again and again, The seagull is an engine for extraordinary services. Cate blanchett is a magnetic and crazy Arkadina. It is full of responsibility and effect and gives less a portrait of a bad actor like the bad actor: jumping into a purple boiler suit; Make the divisions (applause from the audience) in glitter pants; Tap dancing, look to the ground, fidget and rustle papers when the spotlight is on someone else.

However, there is not a single spotlight in the best Czechow tradition. Almost every character has a moment in which the stage takes over the color of their personality, although I wanted them to have done this without taking one of the microphones to be complied with: the text is reduced by reinforcement. Emma Corrin with Peter Pan Candor makes Nina both unusual and artless. At the moment most of the dramatic trigorine (a stiff, self -evident Tom Burke) beats, Nina beats him: just like an uncertain young girl could overreact. As a Masha, Tanya Reynolds has no trace of decorative melancholy: she is really depressed, sunk in a slim long skirt that has vaping. And Jason Watkins with bad shorts and a blue supermarket plastic bag-is a clever, funny, heartbreaking sorin.

In 2007 I saw a transcendent production directed by Ian Rickson with Kristin Scott Thomas as Arkadina (both were there in this press night). On Hildegard Bechtlers Royal Court Set – Dark Wood and seagull colors – Carey Mulligan flew alongside Mackenzie Crook and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Nina. No production has exceeded this for me, but this completely different liveliness in Barbican is proof of morphing, the weak power of The seagull.

It is exceptional to the assembly power of Rubber stamp. How it starts and ends as a unique story as a universal statement. How – how the theater is uniquely equipped is actually incarnated.

This is a 2024 Nottingham Playhouse production of a real Nottingham story. Who should write it better than James Sherwood Graham, who grew up in Nottinghamshire. And if you better train the nationwide effects than Graham, whose football like Portrait-of-A-Country games Dear England has just arrived at The National in an updated version. In fact, more than nationwide: Adam Penford’s production of Rubber stamp Go to Broadway this autumn.

Based on the autobiographical memoirs of Jacob Dunne Directly from wrong (2022), Rubber stamp is a story of informal violence and catastrophic consequence. As a teenager who is high on drugs and band pressure, Dunne lands an unmotivated blow to a stranger and is detained for manslaughter. But it is also a story of the repair. A few years after his detention, Dunne has a degree, a family and a sense of purpose. Under the patronage of the restorative legal process, he was brought together with the destroyed parents of the dead. Although they have always shaded, they understood each other.

In order to convince, the story must gradually and fell. Penford gives him the right pace: as if we would watch in real time. Although the evening begins with an overwhelming choreography and the social message is strongly underlined, enormous acting conveys a feeling that things are always kept in a trembling balance. The puncher says: “I didn’t mean it.” The father of his victim realizes that a blow is not an accident.

David Shields performs a professional performance as a young man. At first he is next to himself: Fidgety-Limbed, his speech a number of blurred noises that do not always merge in words, his words sometimes only make sense. He is slowly becoming the focus: narrower mentally, physically, emotional. As the victim’s mother, Julie Hesmondhalgh is remarkable. Although her performance is completely open, it is full of small, self-ironious, what-am-i-like gestures, of which they may only believe that they would only register in the close-up. She makes a comedy and hesitate to tire her feelings. In search of the word “punishment” she comes up with “pontefract”; She stumbles over the word “restorative”. Tony Hirst is impressive like her husband: steadily sad, friendly, irreconcilable. It is in a furry dressing dress, in a chunky cable. Alec Baden gives an unforgettable stage debut.

Here there is a strong, openly explained social message about the waste of life here: Why, asks a character, understand that people understand that the potholes who have left themselves to gap holes become gaping, but do not recognize that the crack turns into people and their circumstances into Abysms. Rubber stamp Convince us that this does not have to be the case.

Star reviews (from five)
The seagull ★★★★
Rubber stamp ★★★★

• The seagull is in the Barbican Theater in London until April 5th

• Rubber stamp is in the young Vic in London until April 26th