Cate Blanchett played the actress Arkadina in Thomas Ostermeier's staging of Chekhov's The Seagull in the Barbican Theatre.
Cate Blanchett returned to the stage in Chekhov’s The Seagull at the Barbican Theatre from Wednesday 26 February to 5 April 2025, in a new adaptation directed by Thomas Ostermeier.
Chekhov wrote the play in 1895, and the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg gave it its first performance on 17 October 1896. The night was a famous failure: Vera Komissarzhevskaya, playing Nina, lost her voice before a hostile house. Konstantin Stanislavski’s production for the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898 made it a triumph and set Chekhov’s reputation as a dramatist of subtext. It is the first of his four major plays. Stanislavski’s attention to subtext led audiences to read it as a tragedy, though Chekhov had intended a comedy.
Chekhov described it in a letter as a comedy with three women’s parts, six men’s, four acts, a view over a lake, a great deal of talk about literature, little action and tons of love.
Duncan Macmillan, author of People, Places and Things, made the adaptation with Ostermeier, who had previously staged An Enemy of the People. Blanchett played Arkadina, the celebrated actress at its centre, and Tom Burke her lover Trigorin. Burke returned to the stage with her. Emma Corrin played Nina, and Kodi Smit-McPhee played Arkadina’s son Konstantin, the playwright. Marg Horwell designed the set and costumes, and Bruno Poet the lighting.