The Seagull (Barbican Theatre, London) 

After a string of theatrical duds, misfires and howlers involving Hollywood heavyweights Sigourney Weaver, Rami Malek and Brie Larson, Cate Blanchett was the latest star of the big screen to have a go on the London stage last night.

Happily, she stops the rot.

But, to be fair, that is thanks in large part to a remarkable ensemble of home-grown talent including the estimable Tom Burke (The Three Musketeers) and Emma Corrin (The Crown).

Besides them, there’s a raft of other fine British talent on parade including Paul Higgins (The Thick Of It), Jason Watkins (W1A) and a doleful Priyanga Burford in this modern update of Chekhov’s late 19th-century tragi-comedy, which has more bit parts than a branch of Screwfix.

Not that Blanchett needs much support. She has plenty of previous in our theatres, and as a famous actress she’s well suited to her role of Arkadina, a famous Russian actress.

With her geometrical features, Blanchett is as masklike and inscrutable as ever. But she’s playful, too – her sensationally self-absorbed Arkadina, on forced holiday in the Russian countryside, reminded me at times of Jennifer Saunders in Ab Fab.

Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett stars in Anton Chevok’s The Seagull

Banchett stars as Arkadina in the play’s latest adaptation at the Barbican in London 

She is constantly pulling stunts in the first half – singing songs, throwing sulks, even doing the splits.

But in the second half she can dodge her emotional vulnerabilities no longer. Burke, playing her lover, the famous writer Trigorin, takes a shine to Corrin as aspiring young actress Nina.

Burke’s reticent, monosyllabic author is a bearded fashion disaster in saggy brown jumper, discount sport shorts and whiffy looking trainers. He typifies a show that looks like it nicked its costumes from a bin bag outside Oxfam.

Nor does Corrin fare much better, in the shapeless togs favoured by today’s disaffected teenagers.

Blanchett’s designer-clad Arkadina is the one exception in fashionable German director Thomas Ostermeier’s ostentatiously dowdy production, which opens with a quad bike rolling on stage in front of a field of maize.

Not only has Ostermeier dressed his cast like down-at-heel country folk – he has them share seemingly rambling asides on microphones. That’s when we’re not being blasted by The Stranglers’ heroin song Golden Brown, emphasising (I suppose) the fact that fame is a dangerous drug.

After three hours, I tired of these showily unshowy antics.

Yet I couldn’t fault the actors’ individual turns. Not Blanchett’s manic Arkadina, not Burke’s gloomily taciturn

Arriving at her family’s estate for the weekend, Arkadina finds herself caught up in a storm of conflicting desires

Trigorin, nor Corrin’s nervy, emaciated Nina.

And there’s so much more to take on board, including Higgins’s embarrᴀssing estate manager, Watkins’ self-satirising uncle, and Burford’s mother, romantically slighted by the vain local doctor (Paul Bazely).

We haven’t even got to Zachary Hart’s goofy hanger-on, or Tanya Reynolds despairing goth, in love with Kodi Smit-McPhee as Arkadina’s lanky, troubled, and lovelorn son Konstantin (an impressive stage debut).

The challenge is to make all these parts pull in the same direction, on a journey of laughter and despair.

I’m afraid that didn’t quite happen for me, and may explain the unusually patchy standing ovation at the end.

The show is sold out (bar returns), but I suspect it will be filmed. If so, aspiring actors like Nina will still be able to admire the high-end acting. . . even if they are less impressed by the bargain basement costumes.

 

Alterations (Lyttelton, National Theatre)

Verdict: Patchy

Dress it up how you like, but Alterations isn’t a great play. Even though we’re told it’s been re-tailored with ‘additional material’ (pun possibly intended) by Trish Cooke, Michael Abbensetts’ drama about Guyanese needle-and-thread man Walker (Arinzé Kene), in 1970s London, is a lightweight, awkwardly designed period garment.

Walker has chosen to accept an impossible mission — to shorten hundreds of pairs of trousers by a random six inches in less than 24 hours — so he can go into business making suits.

To help him, he enlists, fires, and re-employs a useless chancer called Horace (Karl Collins), who not only nearly scuppers the order, but also has designs on Walker’s wife (Cherrelle Skeete).

More reliable support comes from dad-to-be Buster (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr) and frustrated gofer Courtney (Raphel Famotibe), who is fired and re-employed on a whim.

Colin Mace (Mr Nat) in Alterations at the National Theatre

Gershwyn Eustache Jnr (Buster), Raphel Famotibe (Courtney) and Karl Collins (Horace) in Alterations at the National Theatre

Arinzé Kene (Walker Holt) in Alterations at the National Theatre

Walker is a chaotic businessman, improbably championed by stereotypical Jewish rag-trade entrepreneur Mr Nat (Colin Mace). And it’s hard to take his ambition seriously when the whole of his strategy at work — and home — is summed up by his constant plea: ‘Just give me a chance!’

On the upside, Kenze’s Walker is loveable (if hopeless); and Collins turns Horace into an affably feckless peacock.

But Lynette Linton’s production, on a set loaded with clothing racks, is lost on the huge Lyttelton stage. It would have worked better in a more intimate setting as a batty sitcom with eccentric characters.

The National is obviously keen to promote cultural diversity, but that doesn’t mean they have to try on any old outfit they find.

 

Edward II (Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon) 

Verdict: Medieval melodrama 

Edward II is a play beloved of students hoping to combine political protest with Sєxualised barbarism. 

That makes it an interesting choice for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford – especially as it features the company’s ‘co’-artistic director Daniel Evans in the тιтle role of the gay monarch, deposed because of his pᴀssion for his lover, Piers Gaveston.

Gaveston’s name sounds suspiciously like a well-known indigestion cure (Gaviscon), and ironically, the king’s favourite is the cause of much belly-aching among the feuding nobility, furious at his slights – and Edward’s indulgence of them. 

They want Gaveston ᴅᴇᴀᴅ or banished – and the same goes for Edward, who they see as debauching the offices of state.

Edward II is a play beloved of students hoping to combine political protest with Sєxualised barbarism

The protest element lies in Gaveston and Edward’s defiance of authority. The Sєxualised barbarism is Edward’s apocryphal death… caused by a red-H๏τ poker being shoved up his backside (because spilling the king’s blood was taboo).

And the RSC are making a point, too – about horrific homophobia down the ages.

But Marlowe’s play isn’t about tolerance. He crunches a complex, violent, 20-year reign into a salacious melodrama of power and cruelty. Edward’s Sєxuality is just a pretext.

None of that makes you warm to his characters and, running at just 100 minutes, it’s a good hour shorter than his contemporary, Shakespeare, would have had it.

The Bard would surely have explored more complex psychological dilemmas and motivations. 

Marlowe, on the other hand, is preoccupied with the duplicity and brutality of power and its execution. A bit like the White House today.

Evans has always been an accomplished actor, especially in musical theatre. And many were surprised at his move into creative stewardship, running Sheffield Theatres and Chichester’s Festival Theatre. 

Nor does he strike me as ring-rusty. His Edward is an infatuated sovereign, who grows angry and frustrated, before giving up and cowering, scared witless, in a dungeon.

A play which made it hard to warm to the characters, this interpretation was ultimately hard to enjoy

Daniel Raggett’s murky, pacy, noirish production with a rock music score is at its strongest when at its most cynical.

At the start, we’re invited almost sarcastically to ‘pay our respects’ at the coffin of the previous king, Edward I, with its honour guard of decorated generals in mourning. 

One of them, Edward’s brother Edmund (Henry Pettigrew), is sympathetic; and another, Pembroke (Emilio Doorgasingh), shows he has some conscience. 

But Enzo Cilenti, as Edward’s nemesis Mortimer, is a callous, Machiavellian alpha male – scooping up Ruta Gedmintas as Edward’s chillingly posh neglected wife Isabella.

Edward keeps a hedonistic clique of gay sycophants, led by Eloka Ivo’s provocative Gaveston. But Marlowe’s dramatic appeтιтe was for the play’s uncompromisingly misanthropic machinations. Those make this work impressively ugly, but equally hard to enjoy.

Until April 5.