Hampstead Theatre announces its autumn season 2016 for the Main Stage, which will include new plays by Michael Frayn, Tony Kushner and Beth Steel.
UNCLE VANYA – Almeida Theatre
Robert Icke’s new adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya is best summarised as an update – and an Anglicisation. Played in contemporary clothes, with sprinkled swearwords (so often touted as modern shorthand for “relevance”), Uncle Vanya is now ‘Uncle Johnny’, Professor Serebryakov is simply ‘Alexander’, Dr Astrov is ‘Michael’.
DOUBLE BILL – Edinburgh Fringe
“✭✭✭✭✩ Character-driven”
Young critics scheme review:
Theatre Alba present a double bill at Duddingston Kirk Manse of Chekhov’s Smoking is Bad for You and Tennessee Williams’ Something Unspoken.
THE SEAGULL – Open Air Theatre
Fortune favours the brave, and the meteorological riskiness of outdoor theatre sometimes pays handsomely. A great heron flew over, squawking doom, just as Irina screamed her frantic possession of the appalling Trigorin and Chekhov’s tragicomic household moved towards disaster. The moon rose over the card-players as beyond the window under a darkening sky Konstantin found a deranged, ruined Nina. The thunderstorm and sluicing rain from behind Jon Bausor’s strange mirrored canopy were false, but the intensity and brooding darkness of old Sorin’s struggling estate were no more or less real than the rustling trees of the real park. Perfect.