MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
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Pinpointing Seagull’s universality
MARY CONWAY recommends, with minor reservations, an innovative staging of the Chekhov classic
company
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
The Seagull
Harold Pinter Theatre
DIRECTOR Jamie Lloyd is famed for attracting new and diverse audiences to the theatre. And how better to do this than by casting a star of the small screen (Emilia Clarke) in a play written by a theatrical giant (Anton Chekhov), then reworking it for a modern audience through a script by a young, much-celebrated playwright (Anya Reiss)?
If the first night audience of this bold but skeletal West End showpiece is anything to go by – packed as it is with celebrities and eager fans – success is in the bag.
Messing with the work of Chekhov can be perilous, provoking traditionalists to expressions of untold fury. The original Seagull, after all, is adored by the world at large, its greatest productions feasting not only on the profundity of the text and the human truth of the characters, but on the splendour of the rural setting and the originality of the performance style.
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