The Seagull

Description

The Seagull, a spectacular failure on its first appearance, was the play which, on its second, established Anton Chekhov as an important and revolutionary dramatist. Here, amid 'the weariness of life in the country', the famous actress Arkadina presides over a household riven with desperate love, with dreams of success and dread of failure. It is her son, Konstantin, who one day shoots a seagull; it is the novelist, Trigorin, who will one day write the story of the seagull so casually killled; but it is Nina, 'the seagull' herself, whose life to come will rewrite the story.

Christopher Hampton was born in the Azores in 1946. As a child he travelled around Aden, Egypt and Zanzibar. He was educated at Lancing College and in 1966 he went to New College, Oxford to study German and French, graduating in 1969 with a First Class degree. He wrote his first play, When Did You Last See Your Mother?, at the age of eighteen. It was first performed by Oxford undergraduates and subsequently moved to the Royal Court in June 1966. Since then, Christopher Hampton has worked on numerous original plays, adaptations and translations in the theatre, television and cinema. Hampton's plays are published by Faber in its Contemporary Classics series.