Konstantin writes an avant-garde play for his beloved Nina to perform. His mother, Arkadina, a successful actress of the traditional school, and her novelist lover Trigorin, attend the first performance - and the meeting of Trigorin and Nina sets in train a series of tragi-comic events which leave no-one unaffected. Mike Poulton's adaptation of the Chekhov classic is fast-moving and funny; his ear for the rhythms, non sequiturs and tangential nature of real speech make it accessible, actable and indisputably modern.