Review Roundup: What Did the Critics Think of Cate Blanchett in THE SEAGULL?

Cate Blanchett and Tom Burke make their return to the stage in Thomas Ostermeier's new production of Chekhov’s The Seagull.

Cate Blanchett stars as Arkadina, a celebrated actress whose larger-than-life presence dominates both the stage and her personal relationships. Arriving at her family's country estate for the weekend, she finds herself caught in a storm of conflicting desires. Her playwright son, Konstantin (Kodi Smit-McPhee), struggles to step out of her shadow as he pursues his own artistic ambitions and her lover Trigorin (Tom Burke) becomes the object of affection for the aspiring young actress Nina (Emma Corrin).

As their lives entwine and they each grapple with their desires, ambitions, and disappointments, Chekhov's timeless story unfolds in a gripping tale of vanity, power and sacrifices made in the name of art.

This new adaptation by Duncan MacMillan (People Places & Things) and Thomas Ostermeier (An Enemy of the People) runs for six weeks only.

What did the critics think?

BroadwayWorld, Gary Naylor: It’s not all bad as we do get the laughs that Chekhov intended (and that he has always got - if you don’t count the famous silence that greeted its premiere - in his homeland) but, unlike the most delicious productions of his work, the comedy does not slide frictionlessly out of the tragedy. Led by a wildly over the top Cate Blanchett, leaning into all the histrionic impulses of the popular actress, Irina Arkadina, the jokes, the clowning and the putdowns come thick and fast. But there’s a relentless quality to them and a jarring when the tone changes - half comic and half tragic instead of fully comic and fully tragic at the same time.  

The New York Times, Houman Barekat: Nature abhors a vacuum, and Blanchett enthusiastically fills it, with a little help from a charismatic ensemble of secondary characters. Zachary Hart is funny and genial as the downtrodden Medvedenko, a schoolteacher in the original script but reimagined here as a forklift truck driver. Slightly patronizingly, he is dressed in a soccer jersey to indicate that he is working class. (The costumes are by Marg Horwell.) Jason Watkins as Arkadina’s doddering, kindly brother, Sorin; Paul Bazely as the smooth-talking local doctor, Dorn; and Paul Higgins as the sycophantic estate manager, Shamrayev, all have great presence, and their idle badinage gives the piece its distinctive comic ambience. The pick of the bunch is Tanya Reynolds, endearingly nerdy as Shamrayev’s lovelorn daughter, Masha, who pines for Konstantin but must make do with Medvedenko.

The Standard, Tim Bano: You do wonder which of her Hollywood colleagues Blanchett is channelling here: snippy, haughty, eye-rolling, everything a big gesture, everything a performance. She exudes entitlement, like she’s made the absolute assumption that everyone adores her. Her Arkadina can’t stop acting. Every line is an aria, a song-and-dance moment. Some speeches burst into song, even tap dance – at one point she does the splits. She’s never able to fully engage with the person she’s talking to because she’s always playing to the gallery.

The Guardian, Arifa Akbar: Blanchett may be the glitteriest of castings but this is a powerhouse ensemble that first matches and then outshines her in intensity. Her Arkadina is an actor off-stage, too, her fame an act of will in this household, and she pulls out the emotional theatrics to circumvent pain . The mother of a complicated son, she expresses worry over his first suicide attempt but greater concern that she might be getting a cold-sore.

The Telegraph, Dominic Cavendish: Corrin lends Nina a winning elfin energy and gawky charm, although Burke’s obsessive Trigorin is less dashing, more subdued than expected. Among a generally fine cast, hats off to Jason Watkins as Arkadina’s kindly, ever-more ailing brother, and to stage debutant Kodi Smit-McPhee, the picture of youthful vulnerability as the neglected, self-destructive Konstantin. Is this long night worth north of £200 for the best seats? Well, the play will surely return soon; but a cast like this is a rare event.

Time Out, Andrzej Lukowski: Arkadina is absurd and OTT, and in her performance Blanchett has a ball satirising what I would assume are the celebrity circles she herself hangs out in. With her eye-popping wardrobe, weapons-grade cattiness, absurd lack of self-consciousness and occasional flashes of a messiah complex, she’s like Blanche DuBois crossed with Patsy from Ab Fab crossed with Bono. The character was always a portrait of insecurity, but Blanchett, Macmillan and Ostermeier have added to that a withering but very funny send up of actual celebrity, something that didn’t really exist in Chekhov’s day.

WhatsOnStage, Sarah Crompton: Yet the really surprising thing about director Ostermeier’s superb production, in a magnificent adaptation by him and playwright Duncan MacMillan, is just how serious and sensitive it is in unpicking both the comic and tragic notes in Chekhov’s study of a group of unhappy, arty, self-obsessed people who can’t make any sense of their lives in a time of crisis – and have a miserable habit of falling in love with the wrong person.

London Theatre, Marianka Swain: But, magnetic though Blanchett is, this is a unified ensemble effort. Tom Burke is tremendous as a compulsively vampiric writer whose detachment, which initially seems amusingly eccentric, is revealed to be chillingly sociopathic. Wonderful too are Emma Corrin as the hungry but too-breakable Nina, Tanya Reynolds’s deadpan depressive Masha, glued to her vape, and, in a notable stage debut, Kodi Smit-McPhee’s Konstantin: furious adolescent angst personified. I’ve never before felt so viscerally that he and Arkadina pose a vicious existential threat to one another.

The Times, Clive Davis: If you’re an Ostermeier fan, this Chekhov adaptation — co-written with our own Duncan MacMillan — is another example of 21st-century drama at its most audacious. For those of us in the sceptical camp, it’s a little like seeing a classic rewritten with children’s crayons, even if Blanchett’s casting has turned the venture into the hottest of hot tickets.

The Seagull is at the Barbican Theatre until 5 April