THE SEAGULL

Peacock Theatre, Dublin

Aug 24-29 8pm €15-€25

01-8787222

It had to happen sooner or later. One look at theatres around the capital and throughout the country this week suggests that the youth of today have finally taken over, banishing all those wheezing panjandrums – anyone over 22, essentially – from the stage. In Project, a defiantly experimental production from Dublin Youth Theatre is coming to a close, while Kildare Youth Theatre continues with the first Irish production of Laura Wade’s dark play, Breathing Corpses.

Youth theatre, however, still tends to operate under adult supervision, where the reassuring verses of a Shakespearean tragedy or the gleeful nihilism of Dennis Kelly, Neil LaBute or Enda Walsh always smack vaguely of a patronising or fretful gesture: an old person’s view of young people.

At first glance, then, The Seagull – Chekhov’s muted tragedy, set among hopeless Russian theatre types – doesn’t look like the stuff of youth drama. But NAYD have spotted the relevance in a play of longing, humour and cruelty to every demographic, using the arch Martin Crimp’s version and hiring the playfully intelligent Wayne Jordan to direct.

This is already bringing a fresh perspective. As one young participant put it, with an often-ignored insight into Chekhovian naturalism: “It’s not about drugs or joy-riding or anything like that.”

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