AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮✮ Chekhov's The Seagull Lyric Hammersmith | London directed by Simon Stephens In Sean Holmes’ production of The Seagull the audience are cleverly cast in a vital if silent role: that of the play’s omnipresent lake. We become the backdrop of Konstantin’s experimental play, the place where the titular seagull is shot, the shore along which Nina eventually stumbles back to the scene of her downfall. We are confidants, somewhere for the characters to throw out wry asides, inne

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Simon Stone's Three Sisters Theatertreffen | Berlin directed by Simon Stone Simon Stone’s modernisation of Anton Checkov’s Three Sisters opens Germany’s 53rd annual Theatertreffen as a guest production by Theater Basel at the Berliner Festspiele. Three Sisters has been selected as one of the “ten most notable productions” of the year in the German-language region selected by the jury from 344 productions in 63 cities. The festival is introduced by the director of the

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Anton Chekhov's Ivanov Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Eamon Flack The word is not explicitly mentioned in Eamon Flack’s adaptation, but his Ivanov shows all the signs of a modern man deeply depressed. He is unable to work, and everything seems to be a source of anxiety. As an educated man of some social standing, Nikolai Ivanov is expected to do better and everyone waits for him to get his act together. Nikolai himself blames no one else for his predicament,

✮ Anton Chekhov's The Seagull Regent's Park Open Air Theatre | London directed by Matthew Dunster I wonder what Stanislavski would make of this. Here his famously-accented ‘bits’ – or beats, slices of action in this oft-revived Chekhov – are accompanied by Christopher Shutt’s jarring bass drone. These moments of ominous importance, klaxons that would be more at home in a trailer for a Michael Bay film, occur countless times throughout the evening and are about as subtle as a

✮ 1/2 Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya St.James Theatre | London directed by Russell Bolam It’s a bafflement. Not the updating of a hundred-year-old play to the contemporary scene, nor its production in the irregular swank of the St. James Theatre. No, the befuddling thing is the pair of Crocs onstage. It’s hard enough to fathom the Chekhovian superfluous man at the best of times – add the mystery of why he would choose to wear no-one’s favourite amphibious footwear and things get

✮✮✮ Chekov's Three Sisters Southwark Playhouse | London directed by Russell Bolan Three Sisters opened at the Southwark Playhouse in a new version by award-winning writer Anya Reiss. Reiss, well known for her work at the Royal Court, her modern adaptations of Spring Awakening and another Chekov with last year's The Seagull, now tackles Three Sisters: a challenge in itself which Reiss takes it on head-first with mixed results. The setting ('near a British Embassy, overseas, no