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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Arifa Akbar

Seagull: True Story review – Putin’s war overshadows a heroically meta staging of Chekhov

Andrey Burkovskiy and Stella Baker in Seagull: True Story at Marylebone theatre.
Fizzing with energy … Andrey Burkovskiy and Stella Baker in Seagull: True Story at Marylebone theatre. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian

This is a play about the making of a play in a time of war. The latter is Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, and a fictional director, based on a real-life director, is producing it when Russia declares war on Ukraine. If that sounds like meta leaps within somersaults, Russian director Alexander Molochnikov does a heroic job of making it enjoyable, if antic.

It begins with rehearsals at the Moscow Art theatre and travels to New York where fictional director Kon (Daniel Boyd), loosely based on Molochnikov, lives in exile after his public criticism of Putin’s war.

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