ajhlovestheatre

SEAGULL: TRUE STORY

created and directed by Alexander Molochnikov

written by Eli Rarey

Marylebone Theatre, London – until 12 October 2025

running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval 

https://www.marylebonetheatre.com/productions/seagull-true-story

This is surely the most audacious, inventive show on any current London stage. The brainchild of director Alexander Molochnikov, who fled his native Moscow for New York when the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2022, Seagull: True Story is partly autobiographical, wholly bonkers, yet deeply felt, and frequently jaw-dropping to look at. It’s a genuine original, drawing on vaudeville, clowning, contemporary dance, recent history, and avant garde theatre as much as Chekhov.

Rousing, infuriating, uproariously funny and ultimately desperately moving, this isn’t really a riff on The Seagull at all, although elements of the second half satisfyingly mirror it. The title derives from the fact that the central character/Molochnikov’s avatar, director Kon (a superb Daniel Boyd) is working on a production of the Russian classic at the fabled Moscow Arts Theatre when Putin attacks the neighbours. There’s a desperately sad moment in the first half when the assembled onstage actors stop their rehearsal and stare out front, watching the chaos unfold (overwhelming, unsettling sound design by Julian Starr) with a collective expression of desolation and bewilderment.

With the velvety red curtains, lightbulb-studded dressing room mirrors and other theatrical paraphernalia (designer: Alexander Shishkin) the stage initially looks set for a shabby-chic production of Cabaret. Indeed, there are superficial similarities with that musical’s Emcee character and the more benign but still unpredictable MC of Andrey Burkovskiy (“everything is fantastic!”) whose cajoling of the audience threatens to turn into taunting. Burkovskiy, who also portrays, brilliantly, an increasingly exasperated theatre manager and a manipulative, grandstanding Broadway producer, is the real deal, a formidable stage presence with the ability to delight, unsettle, warm and warn. You wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off him, if everybody else wasn’t so good.

There’s a real edge to the MC’s relationship with sidekick Anton, a poet and actor with a permanently hangdog air (Elan Zafir, utterly wonderful), and overall a whiff of Beckett about this shambling, bittersweet pair. Then there’s grande dame actress Olga, also Kon’s mother and cast as Arkadina, played with radiant elegance and an appropriately steely edge by Ingeborga Dapkunaite, all too willing to regularly remind him that he wouldn’t be directing at this level if it wasn’t for his connection to her. Scriptwriter Eli Rarey accurately conveys the flamboyant, sometimes brutal, way theatre folk speak to each other, and his work throughout is sharply funny and psychologically acute.

Molochnikov’s production is imbued throughout with rough magic, delighting in the possibilities of theatre, constantly breaking the fourth wall, seamlessly fusing music and dance with text, and creating some extraordinary stage pictures (look out for the shirtless Putin on horseback!). The Moscow-set first half has a strong flavour of the freewheeling zeal of European theatre, while the second half unerringly captures the grunge and polyglot energy of the avant garde, multicultural NYC theatre scene. The play is also very much about the differences in approach to theatre-making between the two cultures: the repatriated Kon ends up living in a Bushwick commune for artists (“all the way from Russia only to live with communists” as the MC wryly notes) with a young actress (Stella Baker, superb) who comes to the rescue when his luggage is stolen on the subway. The tantalising glimpses we see of his vision for The Seagull suggest that it’s even more iconoclastic than this year’s Thomas Ostermeier version with Cate Blanchett at the Barbican. 

Seagull: True Story also touches on censorship in a way that, sadly, is probably as relevant to the USA in 2025 as it is to Russia. Time and again, raw theatrical power sits alongside whimsical humour and the effect is captivating and, at times, absolutely devastating. It’s pretty crazy stuff but, crucially, every single person connected with the production, on stage and off, seems to share the same collective vision, which lends an exhilarating coherence even when the show is at its most off-the-wall.

Ohad Mazor, also in the cast, provides choreography encompassing everything from folk to contemporary dance and rave, that trickles through the action like a stream before suddenly bursting into an ocean of full-out dancing: it’s ingenious and as essential to the unique flavour of the production as Fedor Zhrulavlev’s rocky, exhilarating compositions. Alex Musgrave’s lighting is potent and transformative.

Ultimately, this is Total Theatre of a kind that we don’t often see in this country outside of the work of Complicité and occasional visits from European companies and Slava’s Snowshow seasons. The concept, the writing, the acting, the dancing, the design elements, the bizarre spectacle….it’s quite extraordinary and should be required viewing for anybody who admires stage work that pushes the envelope. It’s rude, raucous, wildly entertaining yet deadly serious. Go and experience it.