Anticipation of one sort or another always builds strongly before the staging of a great classic. Those who envisage Chekhov’s The Seagull as a slow ‘intellectual’ experience should make it their business to see Stoppard’s lively translation fleshed out by a master of theatre with all his contemporary wits at work.

Under Elric Hooper’s direction the characters, racked though they be by frustrated dreams and unrequited love, are simply very funny. The tragic human truths of the play belong more to our perceptions than theirs.

Set in pre-revolution Russia, The Seagull reflects a period of momentous social and cultural change. Ideas about life, art and work were then, as now, moving targets and Chekhov’s romance covers the preoccupations of a Bohemian household.

Irina (to cut short the full magnificent Russian title) is a famous and aging actress, accompanied by her equally famous writer-lover. Their impact on the lives of Irina’s son, aspiring to write for a new idea of theatre, as well as on Nina from a wealthy landowner family, is cataclysmic. Frequent references to that other troubled son, Hamlet, reinforce our perception of the complexity of human relationships, as a veritable web of associations and longings is woven and more and more is revealed about the larger company.

The play is named though, not for the fledgling actress Nina, but for a free-flying beautiful bird, shot early in the play and laid before her. As a symbol of her own aspiration – indeed of all aspirations to freedom, to soar with dreams – both the bird and its later petrifaction become very clear. The famous writer, Trigorin, himself makes a note of the little corpse and ‘invents’ a back story about an innocent girl who could be taken up by a man, having not much else to do, who will ruin her. The painful irony is that when the action thus foreshadowed has indeed happened, he cannot remember the bird at all, even when its stuffed remains are displayed for him. 

Design solutions for such material are handled with flair. Tony Geddes is responsible for a bleached set which embraces lakeside, inner rooms and Russian landscape as well as suggesting the nebulous territory of the heart. Human presence even in group scenes is never cosy and the space allows Hooper to place characters to stunning effect, moving from electric dualogue to bewildered cluster as the world unravels. 

Lighting and sound from Brendan Albrey and Josh Major is both subtle and supportive of mood, while the palette of costume provided by Emily Thomas and Pauline Laws (thanks to a very large construction team) tracks character development impeccably.

As always, it is the characters, though, that we have to care about, to engage with. The household, headed by Irina’s older brother Sorin, colourfully realised by Martin Howells, overflows with their small lives.

To provide a benchmark of wisdom and neutrality as matters advance, Geofffrey Heath playing Dorn – the Good Doctor Chekhov himself one feels – projects a kindly, reconciled wisdom: “What sensitive creatures they are…all this love about… what can I do?” 

It is no surprise to see Rima Te Wiata round out her role as the melodramatic, self -centred Irina with such wicked charm. There is a touch of real tenderness beneath as she bandages son Konstantin’s wounded head and her final self deluding titter adds a twist of terrible irony as the play ends.

Konstantin himself, played by Owen Black, moves from initial hot headed impetuosity to desperate solitude with complete assurance and Jon Pheloung’s disenchanted writer Trigorin plays the detached observer /seducer as a clear foil.

As for Nina, who knows she is like the seagull but is determined to work on through her third-rate success as an actress, here is a heart breaking performance from Elsie Edgerton-Till. From glowing idealism, through the perilous infatuation for Trigorin, and so to her painful return and farewell when events have played out, the part is lived with complete sincerity and beauty.

Chekhov’s own advice about art making is often quoted and bears repetition: “Let us be just as complex and as simple as life itself,” he suggests, but we have only a couple of hours to share with the performance. The selection of which complexities to include and which simple human truths are the essential ones marks the difference between significant and trivial.

In the end, we have to acknowledge that dreams do not come cheaply. Every facet of this production, direction, visual presence, design and acting crystallises the vision.

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