On a vu La mouette

The Tarbes audience was there at the Parvis on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. The audience was there for a director, a true star of the contemporary scene, and for one of the flagship plays of Russian theater, or even theater in general. The encounter between Thomas Ostermeier and Anton Chekhov's The Seagull for a combination of great names that made all theater lovers salivate! A large, almost blank stage, gray walls, the eight actors seated all around the stage. A resolutely modern production. But the production's appeal doesn't really lie there, nor in the preamble, which takes a sharp look at contemporary theater and our sensitivity to the kilometer-long death that prevents us from being cut off by the war in Syria until the refugees arrive at our doors. Nor in the music, as electric as it is omnipresent, from Jimmy Hendrix to the Doors via Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground.

Ultimately, it's more in the depths that this Seagull finds its power. In the intersection of the relationships between Konstantin and his mother Irina, and between Nina who will be abandoned by Trigorin. From Chekhov's dramatic relationship, Thomas Ostermeier brings out the social and generational tensions between Nina who aspires to become an actress and Irina who is a well-established actress, between Konstantin who has the ambition of a new theater and Trigorin the recognized writer. This insight gives The Seagull a new scope that resonates with our times the text written at the end of the 19th century served in a new translation by Olivier Cadiot and adapted by Thomas Ostermeier. This is what we could expect from this new Seagull. It was probably too demanding to hope for more.