This leaves an audience disarmed when the sucker punch of the final, inevitable tragedy strikes. The cast are no longer ciphers of existentialist arguments but rather flesh and blood characters who we can care about. Adamson’s production brilliantly dissipates the sonorous earnestness that can make the Russian playwright’s works heavy-going and reinstitutes the warmth and playfulness of the characters. The Seagull‘s reputation as a tragedy stems from seminal Russian director Stanislavski’s 1898 production which heavily veered away from humour – Chekhov intended the play as a comedy – and into deeper, darker waters. From Sorin wonderfully describing themselves as an “alcoholic hobo” to Konstantine comedically puffing Sulphur with bellows for the play-within-a-play’s special effects, it plays almost like a mannered drawing-room comedy than a typical Chekhov.

What works brilliantly is Adamson’s smartly-abridged adaptation really brings out the humour of the first half of the play. Plot edit Beside a lake on his land, Sorin helps his nephew Treplev set up the first production of his play. It was directed by Yuli Karasik and its music was written by Alfred Schnittke. Spoiler alert: it’s not just the gull that dies. The Seagull ( Russian:, romanized : Chayka) is a 1972 Soviet film adaptation of the 1896 play of the same name by Anton Chekhov. What transpires is a chain of events that will fracture the social circle gathered there forever and ultimately lead to tragedy.

Away from this scene, the (still curiously Russian-named) characters of The Seagull have retreated to a country house for a promised performance of an avant-garde play. The Bohemian aristocrats had been dubbed the ‘Bright Young Things’ and were lighting up London with a conflagration of fashion, arts and jazz. Bridge House Theatre’s artistic director Luke Adamson relocates the play to 1920’s England.

Russian play the seagull