The Seagull (2025)

Cate Blanchett as: Irina Arkádina

Directed by: Thomas Ostermeier
Adapted by: New version by Duncan MacMillan and Thomas Ostermeier (Based on Anton Chekhov’s play)
Play run: 26 February – 5 April 2025 (opened on 6 March 2025)
Venue: Barbican Centre

 

 

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Cate Blanchett stars as Arkádina, a celebrated actress whose larger-than-life presence dominates both the stage and her personal relationships. Arriving at her family’s country estate for the weekend, she finds herself caught up in a storm of conflicting desires. Her playwright son, Konstantin (Kodi Smit-McPhee), struggles to step out of her shadow as he pursues his own artistic ambitions and her lover Trigorin (Tom Burke), becomes the object of affection for the aspiring young actress Nina (Emma Corrin).

As their lives entwine and they each grapple with their desires, ambitions, and disappointments, Chekhov’s timeless story unfolds in a gripping tale of vanity, power, and the sacrifices made in the name of art.

Cast:

Cate Blanchett as Irina Arkádina
Tom Burke as Alexander Trigorin
Emma Corrin as Nina Zaréchnaya
Kodi Smit-McPhee as Konstantin Treplev
Paul Bazely as Evgeny Dorn
Priyanga Burford as Polina Shamrayev
Zachary Hart as Simon Medvedenko
Paul Higgins as Ilya Shamrayev
Tanya Reynolds as Masha Shamrayev
Jason Watkins as Peter Sorin

Creatives:

Costume design by Marge Horwell
Set design by Magda Willi
Lighting design by Bruno Poet
Sound design by Tom Gibbons
Casting by Jim Carnahan and Liz Fraser

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Promotional; Photoshoot
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Quotes from Cate Blanchett

  • On returning to a production of The Seagull after more than 20 years and playing a different character this time: “It’s really interesting coming back from inhabiting the equal and opposite end of the spectrum after having a career in theatre.” (The Guardian, February 2025)
  • On the play’s theme: “The older generation has a stranglehold when it comes to cultural authority and legitimacy and younger people being starved of creative oxygen and opportunity is part of the reason we’re in the mess we’re in.” (British Vogue, February 2025)
  • On Emma Corrin: “Emma’s interior life is so rich and mysterious. Working with them is like trying to hold mercury. As a performer, they are quicksilver.” (Elle UK, April 2025)

Quotes from Others

  • Thomas Ostermeier:
    — “I think it’s an amazing play about art, and the fight between generations about art, and why are we doing it, and how should we do it, and how much are we harming the next generation.”
  • Tom Burke:
    — “Cate [Blanchett] is like quicksilver on stage and off; she’s got something utterly wild surging through that singular poise.”
  • Emma Corrin:
    — “Cate [Blanchett] is incredible at it [collaborating]. She’ll chuck random shit in and we’ll just go with it. I’m in awe of her imagination and creativity. Thomas [Ostermeier] creates this atmosphere where you could pretty much do anything. It’s an amazing way of working. We’re a complete family. I’ve never felt closer to [a cast].”

Selected Reviews

Excerpts from selected reviews.

  • The Telegraph — “Blanchett’s performance is unmissable. She’s treading in gilded footsteps – Judi Dench, Kristin Scott Thomas and Meryl Streep among them – but, emerging from the thicket as if landed from LA, in shades and purple jump-suit, she makes this diva of a mother her own. She trades on those magazine-cover looks and air of fame, teasing us, in a work that plays with ideas of artifice and reality, with what’s put-on, what’s sincere. Some of her antics are tactical – kittenishly dancing to demonstrate her residual youth, with the splits thrown in – but she has the measure of a woman using lofty control to mask mid-life and maternal pain.”
  • The Daily Express — “Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Irina Arkadina in Chekhov’s play is a masterclass in complexity, blending venom with vulnerability in a way that captivates and intrigues… Blanchett is mercurial as Irina, whether dancing in a desperate attempt to recapture her youthful spirit or removing her blouse and humiliating herself in an attempt to redirect Trigorin’s attention away from the starstruck Nina.”
  • Theatre Weekly — “Ostermeier’s direction, in collaboration with Duncan Macmillan’s adaptation, unlocks the power of The Seagull for a modern audience, bringing a thrilling clarity to Chekhov’s exploration of art, ambition, and the human condition. This Seagull soars on the strength of its extraordinary ensemble cast, led by Blanchett. This is how you reinvent a masterpiece; it’s a production that reminds us why Chekhov’s play has endured for over a century, but more importantly, offers fresh insights into its characters and themes.”
  • WhatsonStage — “At the heart of it all is Blanchett’s Irina, a performance of massive intent, her histrionic interventions constantly drawing attention to the character’s terrifying, egotistical needs. Where much of the action is detailed, this is a huge characterisation, impressively physically adept – there’s one glorious moment where she sprawls on the floor in dismay and then gently pulls a suitcase under her head so she is comfortable. At another, she does the splits in sequinned trousers while proclaiming: “I never think about the future.” In refusing the claims of young people and preserving her own eternal youth, she does – as Kostya suggests – make herself obsolete. She is a caricature of what she could have been. Blanchett catches all the farce of that, but not quite the sadness underlying it. The production draws on her energy, but it’s at its most fascinating when its lesser characters are in play.”
  • Independent — “Blanchett’s Arkadina is wonderfully, hilariously crass, blinding the front row with her glittery jeans then nonplussing the whole audience by tapdancing into splits. Yet underneath the performative silliness, Blanchett conveys a sense of a cavernous emptiness – a detachment from her own emotions that means she can only express herself in a hammy karaoke of borrowed lines.”

Trivia & Facts

  • The second time that Cate Blanchett has been in a production of The Seagull; her first time was in 1997 where she played Nina in a production directed by Neil Armfield at Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney.
  • Kodi Smit-McPhee’s stage debut.
  • Thomas Ostermeier first presented a one-woman take on The Seagull to Cate Blanchett but she declined, preferring to work with an ensemble of actors that she helped assemble.
  • Cate Blanchett and Kodi Smit-McPhee also played mother and son in the TV series, Disclaimer* (2024), directed by Alfonso Cuarón.

Press night after-party, 6 March 2025