The Seagull

Description

Chekhov's celebrated masterpiece is given vibrant new life in this dynamic new version by Olivier Award-winning playwright Simon Stephens. Switching effortlessly between the ridiculous and the profound, The Seagull forensically examines the transcendence and destructiveness of love. The burning need to create art and how harshly that need can be crushed permeates the play. Simon Stephens' new adaption of The Seagull received its premiere at the Lyric Hammersmith, London on 3 October 2017.

Simon Stephens began his theatrical career in the literary department of the Royal Court Theatre, where he ran its Young Writers' Programme. His plays for theatre include Bluebird (Royal Court Theatre); Herons (Royal Court Theatre, 2001); Port (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 2002); One Minute (Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, 2003 and Bush Theatre, London, 2004); Christmas (Bush Theatre, 2004); Country Music (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 2004); On the Shore of the Wide World (Royal Exchange Theatre and National Theatre, London, 2005); Motortown (Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, 2006); Pornography (Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hanover, 2007; Edinburgh Festival/Birmingham Rep, 2008 and Tricycle Theatre, London, 2009); Harper Regan (National Theatre, 2008); Sea Wall (Bush Theatre, 2008/Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2009); Heaven (Traverse Theatre, 2009); Punk Rock (Lyric Hammersmith, London, and Royal Exchange Theatre, 2009); The Trial of Ubu (Essen Schauspielhaus/Toneelgroep Amsterdam, 2010); Wastwater (Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, 2011); Morning (Lyric Hammersmith, 2012); an adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time(National Theatre, 2012); Blindsided (Royal Exchange, 2014); and Birdland (Royal Court, 2014). Awards include the Pearson Award for Best New Play, 2001, for Port; Olivier Award for Best New Play for On the Shore of the Wide World, 2005. His adaptation of Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Play.

...an incisive 21st-century version of Chekhov. **** -- The Guardian '... something genuinely moving and at times euphoric'. * Fatherland review, The Stage * 'There's something generously honest in Heisenberg about ordinariness. With humour and a low-level ache of sadness, it tunes into those small, often overlooked encounters that can spin people's lives off in new directions'. * Heisenberg review, The Stage * Classics are there to be reinvented, and the risks that this reinvention takes involve no loss of Chekhovian essence while adding a lot in terms of characters that a 2017 audience might relate to. -- The Radio Times