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 Stephens' Birdland The Royal Court Theatre | London directed by Carrie Cracknell As though in a scene from an old, old fairytale: a prince whose every demand is anticipated and met demands a perfect peach. Not too green, not too ripe, locally grown. The scene could be a parable for what money can't buy you – and in a more straightforward story it might be. But Simon Stephens' bleakly brilliant new play tells you both what money can buy, and what it can’t, chron