“Don’t you want to be a real actress, take risks?” someone asks Nina in Anya Reiss’s cool rewrite of The Seagull. The fact that Nina is played by Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, in her West End debut, adds an extra frisson. Clarke had already started playing the role in previews when theatres shut down in March 2020; she recently said that she feels she was “meant” to be in Jamie Lloyd’s production. It’s certainly been a long time coming.
So, was swapping fiery dragons for Chekhov’s metaphorical dead seagull worth it? I can definitely see why Clarke would be attracted to Reiss’s wry, thinky version. It asks big questions about how we can be artists. It’s staged in a bold, minimalist way. It seems to be reaching for something radical. But this self-consciously languorous production is going to be divisive. Some may find meaning, like the character who says Konstantin’s play made an impression on him, but “I don’t know what kind yet”. I found it unrewarding: slow-burning, always undercutting itself, to little end.
