Review Roundup: THE SEAGULL starring Emilia Clarke

The Seagull, Jamie Lloyd's long-awaited play starring Emilia Clarke, Indira Varma and Daniel Monks has now opened.

A young woman is desperate for fame and a way out. A young man is pining after the woman of his dreams. A successful writer longs for a sense of achievement. An actress wants to fight the changing of the times. In an isolated home in the countryside where dreams are in tatters, hopes dashed, hearts broken and there is nowhere left to turn, the only option is to turn on each other.

So what did the critics think?

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Aliya Al-Hassan: Broadway World: Many will come to see Clarke, but it is Indira Varma who is the standout performer, as domineering mother and actress Arkadina. Imperious, withering and the most lively of the cast, she shows vanity and self-satisfaction dripping into every line.

Clive Davis: The Times: Lloyd's approach is constantly disorienting. We may believe in Daniel Monks's unrelentingly intense Konstantin, an aspiring author who is in revolt against his mother (Arkadina), but Harries seems far too youthful and tentative as Trigorin, while Jason Barnett's estate manager, Shamrayev, is required to deliver lines like a tough guy who has wandered in from a Pinter miniature.

Arifa Akbar: The Guardian: Jamie Lloyd's radical, stripped-back, strangely gripping production, using Anya Reiss's cool adaptation, might well be aspiring to Konstantin's ideal of creating a new theatrical form. This is not Chekhov as we know it, nor theatre as we know it, certainly not in the West End. Its flagrant non-naturalism recalls Lloyd's roaringly radical Cyrano de Bergerac, with actors arranging and rearranging themselves on plastic chairs and speaking with mics on Soutra Gilmour's set of woodchip board walls.

Sam Marlowe: i Newspaper: Props, scenic clutter, even superfluous movement are stripped away. What's left is pitilessly intense, the heartbreak, fear, cruelty and longing laid bare. And the uncompromising staging itself - so real, yet so overtly, starkly theatrical - becomes an eloquent strand in the play's arguments about art and authenticity. It's scintillatingly meta, its ingenuity featherlight.

Alice Saville: Evening Standard: There's something jarring about watching an actor deliver a bravura performance surrounded by the bored faces of their fellow cast members: it's a poignant reminder that even the most moving work of art will leave some people cold.

Andrzej Lukowski: Time Out: To be clear, Lloyd's production hasn't made everyone horrible, and it's anchored by a clutch of more traditional performances, notably the reliably excellent Varna's brassy, emotional Arkadina. But it does create an arena for a series of deep, complicated turns that use a distinctly untheatrical quiet register - made audible by head mics - to explore bold new sides to the characters.

The Seagull is at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 10 September

Photo Credit: Marc Brenner