The Seagull
★★★☆☆ Well crafted
Bedlam Theatre: Wed 11 – Sun 15 Feb 2026
Review by Hugh Simpson
The Seagull, from EUTC at the Bedlam until Sunday, is a fastidious, even reverential production that largely succeeds but does sometimes struggle to find its own identity.
Chekhov apparently regarded his timeless evocation of unrequited love, dashed artistic ambitions, family conflict and wasted lives – played out on a country estate – as a comedy, although traditionally British productions have treated it more as a tragedy.
Daisy Casemore as Nina in EUTC’s The Seagull. Pic: Isabel Beiboer.
The recent highly successful Lyceum production certainly dialled up the comic elements of Mike Poulton’s adaptation. The EUTC, under director Orly Benn, have gone for the Tom Stoppard translation, which – although undoubtedly well-crafted – is oddly bloodless, and often unsure how much to modernise the language. Which means we get characters saying things like ‘what rot’.
Benn’s direction is careful and intelligent. The performances are accomplished, while enormous thought has gone into every element of the design and staging, but the production never quite takes flight.
played with relish
Ava Vaccari is the successful stage performer Irina Arkadina, whose constant determination to be the centre of events is played with relish and beautiful timing. However, apart from Samuel Clarke’s uninhibited turn as the estate manager Shamraev, the other performers often appear afraid of confronting the comic or ludicrous sides of their characters’ predicaments.
Ava Vaccari and Jorren Dykstra. Pic Isabel Beiboer.
This can mean that the necessary lightness of touch is replaced by something that can approach the portentously overwrought, even melodramatic. An example comes early on when the aspiring actor Nina (Daisy Casemore) performs the play written by Irina’s son Konstantin (Benny Harrison). Attempting to write something cutting-edge and new, Konstantin instead produces a heartfelt but ludicrous script; here the tone is not quite right, with most of the audience unsure whether they were supposed to be laughing.
Casemore is very fine at expressing Nina’s naive talkativeness, while Harrison is good at the side of Konstantin that is a wounded child seeking the approval that will never come from his mother. If they are not quite so successful in the characters’ climactic and devastating conversation, it is still a creditable attempt.
generational conflict
Something that is unavoidable in a student production is that the performers are going to be of similar ages, which is a drawback when this play does involve a degree of generational conflict. Vaccari is excellent at seeming older without relying on any of the usual ‘old person’ gimmicks, but elsewhere this is not always as successful.
Leo Odgers, for example, seems straightforwardly youthful as the womanising Dr Dorn, but this is a thoughtful performance nevertheless. Alex El-Husseini brings an appropriate weariness to Irina’s valetudinarian brother Sorin, while Duha Bilal’s desperation as Shamraev’s wife Polina is well-judged.
Ava Vaccari and Benny Harrison in EUTC’s The Seagull. Pic: Isabel Beiboer.
The younger characters, meanwhile, are played with considerable delicacy. This choice is understandable, in order to avoid any possible melodrama, but instead produces a lack of sparkle. The writer Trigorin, Irina’s younger lover who then embarks on a relationship with Nina, can be regarded as a passive observer of others or a calculating manipulator. Here, as played by Jorren Dykstra, he is reserved to the point of quietness and, while carefully considered, comes over as oddly flat.
Masha, Shamraev’s daughter who pines after Konstantin, is played by Claudia Collins with considerable delicacy, but the frankly ridiculous proto-emo elements of her character cry out for a less realistic depiction. Similarly, Medvedenko, the teacher who loves Masha, is given a sympathetic portrayal by Nick Steinmeyer when his downtrodden air does not really lend itself to underplayed realism.
Too many of the performances have an element of ‘period drama’ politeness that fails to do justice to the poetry or the emotional content.
on the safe side
Émilie Noël’s set design is imaginative and used well, which is also true of Aaron Rashid’s lighting and the sound design of Dorian Toms. Liam Jackson, who plays the servant Yakov, also provides the elegant musical direction, with Casemore and Collins singing impressively.
The music choices reflect the production as a whole, however, being just that little bit on the safe side. If the 1960s Joni Mitchell songs (excellent as they are) seem a shade obvious, that is nothing to what comes later. If you are really going to put something as over-familiar (to put it politely) as Loch Lomond on a Scottish stage, you had better be doing something new with it. As it is, it simply cannot bear the emotional weight placed on it here.
Overall, there is just a smidgeon too much respect and tastefulness throughout the production, with the end result being expressive and involving when it might have been more compelling.
Running time: Two hours and 25 minutes (including one interval).
Bedlam Theatre, 11B Bristo Place, EH1 1EZ
Wednesday 11 – Sunday 15 February 2026
Daily at 7.30 pm
Tickets and details: Book here.
The Cast of The Seagull. Pic: Isabel Beiboer.
ENDS
