The Seagull at Derby Theatre

 Surprisingly this is the first time I've seen a Chekhov play performed 'live' - I've read a lot of them and seen quite a few on TV but never live and to a certain level I'm 'right familiar with Chekhov' just like the heroine of Educating Rita. Maybe there's a feeling that Chekhov is too hard or irrelevant for today, I'm not sure, but when I saw our local theatre were producing The Seagull, I thought it was time to take the plunge. A little conferring with my ex-drama student elder daughter, confirmed my suspicion that The Seagull was one of those Chekhov plays about thwarted ambition, set in the countryside and in which everyone desperately wants to go to Moscow  - this is a bit of a family standing joke, so I nearly burst out laughing when one of the characters started talking about needing to go to Moscow!
Anyway, it turned out to be a very enjoyable evening. The cast were great - and included one of our favourite 'locals' John Elkington who we last saw in Of Mice and Men at Nottingham Playhouse. My only quibble would actually have been with Chekhov himself - I would have ended the play with the dramatic off-stage gunshot, but then I'm not a famous Russian playwright.


This production of The Seagull was a co-production between  Headlong Theatre, The Nuffield, Southampton and Derby Theatre.

Romeo and Juliet

I seem to be having a mini Shakespeare fest at the moment - following on from the RSC's excellent production of The Taming of the Shrew, it was Headlong Theatre's turn to amuse me for an evening at Nottingham Playhouse.

Romeo and Juliet is one of those really well known plays that even if, like me, you've never seen it performed live, you know the plot outline, how it all ends, the main speeches from school or somewhere, you might have seen Baz Luhrman's film adaptation with Leonardo Di Caprio and Clare Danes, or you might have seen it in rehearsal as Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter gradually changes shape into Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare In Love. There have to be difficulties in putting on such a well known piece and trying to make it new and different, yet at the same time the old well-loved play. This is the only explanation I can think of for the strange 'what if'/Sliding Doors episodes when a scene would play out then a blinding light flash on the audience and the scene re-play differently. To be honest, I just found it confusing and unnecessary.

As for the rest of the production - well, it was ok. The star-crossed lovers were a bit wishy washy and lacking in sexual tension, though I thought Catrin Stewart's "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" speech excellent. The most outstanding performances of the evening came from the two of the supporting cast playing Mercutio and Benvolio. Both were excellent particularly Mercutio's death scene.

I think I'd been a little spoiled by seeing the RSC the previous week and may have appreciated this more if I'd seen them the other way round. Still, the Teen took away some ideas for her Billy Liar GSCE performance, so not an entirely wasted evening.