Cate Blanchett illuminates the director's tired ratios in “The Seagull.”

When movie stars head to the play, it's very easy – especially because these days they've always been no good at it. Over the past few weeks, London stages have played host to some slightly obscure productions of some classic plays featuring famous screen actors: Sigourney Weaver from “The Tempest”, Rami Malek from “Oedipus” and Brie Larson from “Elektra”. So, a bit of fear could be forgiven when Cate Blanchett rolls into town for a new adaptation of Anton Chekhov's “Segal” at the Barbican Theatre.

But Blanchett is different. Although she is best known for her film productions, the Australian actress has graced the stage to praise her throughout her career, playing the leading role in “Hedda Gabler” and “The Desire of the Name of Street Car.” And she is not familiar with Chekhov, who appeared in Sydney Theatre Company's “Uncle Vanya,” and called “Platonov” from the same company “The Preshing.” She met her husband, playwright Andrew Upton, and performed in the 1997 “Segal” production.

In the production of this modern dress of “Segal”, adapted to Duncan McMillan and Thomas Ostermeyer (“The One Who Killed My Father”, “Reim”), Blanchett plays Irina Arcadina, a well-known older actress whose pathological self oo alienates her son, son Treprev (Kodi smit-mcchaie's Point Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit-Smit- He is a young writer struggling to find his voice and is dissatisfied with the artistic mainstream risk aversion binary. (“We need a new voice, a new perspective, a new form!”)

Alexander Trigolin (Tom Burke), Arcadina's lover, is the successful author of middlebrow fiction, representing everything Constantine wants to demolish. So the blow is double crushed when an older man easily seduces Constantine's lover, aspiring actress Nina Zareknaya (Emma Colin).

Chekhov saw Arkadina as “a foolish, false, assertive egoist.” And Blanchett makes this vision a reality with a passionate brio from the moment she first appears on stage. Her Arcadina leads online wellness influencer vapid can-do spirit wearing a purple jumpsuit and big sunglasses. Very proud of her well-preserved look, she taps and splits the dance to show off her retains. She is a life of a party. Her diva-level bouncing reminds me of Patsy in Joanna Lumley's “Absolutely Great,” but emotionally she is withheld. When Constantine performs an avant-garde play, she dismisses it as “luxurious and adolescent crap.” Even in rare moments of kindness, her language is hryvous and grossly manipulative. (“Poor little crumpet!”)

In stark contrast to these historiography, the other three principals are played in a remarkably calm style. Smit-Mcphee, who has attracted attention with “The Power of Dog” and is now making his stage debut, is believed and sympathetic as a brooding, gawful young Turk, but is too nagging. Burke's Trigorin is badly damaged, delivering all the lines in inexplicably flat intonation, providing an abstract representation of those who are recalling their dreams. When he falls to Nina, he is mysteriously spaced apart and is hypnotized more than horny. Colin shows the same delicate calm that renders Princess Diana so elegantly in “The Crown,” completely unconvincing as an ambitious Ingenu. I know this Nina is so calm. There is no hunger or rawness there.

Nature hates vacuum, and Blanchett eagerly fills it with the help of a charismatic ensemble of secondary characters. Zachary Hart is funny and kind as the oppressed Medvedenko, the original script school teacher, but here he was reconsidered as the driver of a Forklift truck. A little affectionate, he dresses in a football jersey, showing that he is working class. (The costume is by Marg Holwell.) Jason Watkins is Arcadina's ddder, kind brother, Sorin. Paul Baisley as Dawn, a local doctor who talks smoothly. And Paul Higgins, Sicophantic Estate Manager Shamrev, everything has a great presence, and their lazy badinage gives the work a distinctive comic vibe. The bundle pick is Tanya Reynolds, a beloved nerd as Masha, daughter of Shamreiyev's Lovelone, and pines on Constantine, but has to make it in time for Medvedenko.

The climactic scene in which Nina reconnects with Constantine two years later is rendered as a disappointing, unexempt melodrama, just to completely break his heart. Nina is now making a living as a pantomime performer. Rather than transcending her ordeal, she appears to have been completely defeated by it. The play ends with tragedy and there is no consolation.

Magda Willi's set is naked, but with some plastic chairs and a tall chunk of res, symbolizing the country grounds where these events unfold. And there's the distinctive touch of Ostermeier (music thriving, microphone stands, playful violations of the fourth wall) from the beginning. The show begins with Heart's Medvedenko zooming and zooming onto the quad bike stage. After getting off, he picks up an electric guitar, does a bit of crowd work, and gets the numbers by English protest singer Billy Bragg. The other actors then emerge from the bayo and the story progresses in earnest. He then delivers two more Bragg songs.

Ostermeier directed breakdance's “Hamlet,” and in 2024, in a take with Ibsen's “The Enemy of the People,” the actors performed songs by David Bowie and Oasis. The prosperity of these music is not much to enhance “Segal,” so it feels a bit unstable to include it here. It's as if the director is genuinely imposing his style for branding. Despite him, the play almost hangs together.

Ostermeier embodies the artistic conflict once explored in Chekhov's plays, which ruffled feathers with the blue aesthetic choices and left-wing enthusiasm that once veiled feathers in his hometown of Germany. Indeed, Constantine, who delivered lines from Ostermeyer and Macmillan's adapted text, said that “people over 40 don't have any more cultural funds,” reflecting Ostermeyer's own provocative remarks made in a 2001 interview.

This self-deprecating joke betrays real anxiety. Is Ostermeyer a creative mo-death now in his mid-50s? Constantine loses his way as his Oedipal's anguish is closely tied to the quest for artistic self-knowledge. There's no way out of the loop. Ostermeier was even more fortunate, but his “new form” is now ossified into orthodoxy, and he is unsure what to do with himself.

Seagull
It will be at the Barbican Theatre in London until April 5th. barbican.org.uk.