Writing, acting, love and ambition are all themes of the first of Chekhov's major plays, The Seagull Konstantin, an aspiring playwright, seeks new forms of expression and writes an avant-garde piece for his beloved Nina to perform His mother, Arkadina, a successful actress of the traditional school, and her novelist lover Trigorin, attend the first performance - and the meeting of Trigorin and Nina sets in train a series of tragi-comic events which leave no-one unaffected Konstantin kills a seagull and lays it at Nina's feet as a token of his love; as the story progreses, so Nina's fate comes to resemble that of the seagull more and more ... Mike Poulton's adaptation of this classic work is fast-moving and funny; his ear for the rhythms and tangential nature of real speech make it accessible, actable and indisputably modern.

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