Barbican theatre; Young Vic, London
Cate Blanchett is magnetic – and maddening – as faded actor Arkadina in Chekhov’s supreme play about writers. Plus, James Graham’s bracing real-life drama of actions and consequences hits home

Fresh from the seaside, I went in warily to Thomas Ostermeier’s production of The Seagull. How could that bird be an image of vulnerability, when on today’s beaches gulls are predators, strutting like bankers, swooping on passersby? What’s more, it is so hard to pull off the crucial scene in which Nina – betrayed by her lover, her ambitions in ruins – flaps desolately around calling herself a seagull. Tragedy often looks like histrionics. Which raises the question of why critics suspect the celebrated actor Arkadina of inauthenticity because of her profession, while Nina, the failed actor, is considered to be simply sincere.

And yet in this new adaptation by Ostermeier and Duncan Macmillan, Chekhov’s 1896 drama brims with interest, even when snatched brutally into the present: sun loungers! Quad bikes! This is the best ever play about writers, and a real quizzing of drama. Even better, as David Hare, the author of a very good version, has argued, it’s a play about change and struggle, in which theatre is “only the metaphor”.