This Isn’t Your Grandma’s Chekhov: Seagull 2.0—Now With Extra Madness! UNE MOUETTE at LA COMEDIE FRANCAISE in Paris

 A Seagull at the Comédie-Française:

An Opera of Ego, a Storm of Souls, a Black Miracle
A fiery chronicle of a show that left me in smoking ashes

I walked out of A Seagull at the Comédie-Française like someone emerging from a typhoon: hair disheveled, pierced through, drenched… and yet, strangely happy.

Yes, I declare it loud and clear, with a tear in the corner of my eye: this is the most exhausting, gripping, and moving show I’ve ever seen in my life. You leave with the feeling that you’ve not experienced 2.5 hours of theater, but rather an express reincarnation.

Elsa Granat, armed with Chekhov, charges headfirst into humanity and its swampy zones. She turns it into a kind of emotional voodoo ritual where egos devour each other with a teaspoon. No one is breathing. And neither are you. We’re caught in a whirlwind that feels like a therapy group… if that therapy group was run by a volcano.

An opera of unease (but more fun than it sounds)

Here, Chekhov isn’t just contemporary: he’s downright radioactive.
The characters look into distorting mirrors, where only one thing shines: their own belly buttons, in 8K HDR.

Arkadina (Marina Hands, INCANDESCENT, incandescentified, incandescent+++), plays vanity like a musical instrument, with an almost obscene pleasure.

Trigorin (Loïc Corbery) is the type who sighs over his lost genius, but without forgetting to seduce along the way.

Treplev (Julien Frison) burns to invent a new theater but seems to have invented a new form of unease instead.

Nina (Adeline d'Hermy) runs toward art like others run toward a cliff.

Everyone speaks. No one listens.

You start to wonder if this is the first play ever composed entirely of Zoom calls, where everyone has muted each other.

And suddenly, Dorn: human breath in the quicksilver

Fortunately, Dorn (Nicolas Lormeau) appears, a doctor as gentle as a cloud, who manages to be human in a world where everyone is screaming inwardly.
He listens.
He understands.
He doesn’t judge.
Honestly, the first figure of altruism I’ve seen in weeks in a theater.
In this emotional chaos, he’s the herbal tea in a world of double espressos.

Elsa Granat: director or heart surgeon?

With her prologue on childhood, her torn dream-like set design, her raw lighting, Elsa Granat doesn’t just direct: she opens the play like a treasure chest of secrets and exposes everything to the sun.
Some are shouting genius.
Others are just shouting.
But no one remains indifferent.

We dive into a world where women—Arkadina, Nina, Macha—become archaeologists of their own passions, digging through their guts like searching for a treasure that may not even exist.

The men? 

It’s hard to say if they’re weak, lost, endearing, or just… overwhelmed.
Probably all of that at once.

The theater laid bare (and us with it)

What A Seagull achieves is a rare magic:
It holds up a mirror that isn’t flattering, but one you can’t look away from.
It shows what we all do when we think we’re loving, creating, or existing: we wrestle with our ego like a cat with a ball of yarn.
We tire.
We stray.
We begin again.

Granat tells us:
There remains the possibility of Dorn. The possibility of the other.
And honestly, after 2.5 hours of emotional roller coasters, I’ll take it.

In summary: buckle up.
This Seagull is not tame.
It is not comfortable.
It is not polite.

It is alive.
It is burning.
And it bites.

It’s a total experience: a show that sucks out your spine, shakes it, and then gives it back—transformed.

I don’t know if this Seagull will ever (to use Chekhov’s beautiful phrase) spread its wings.
But I know this: it literally blew me away.

You think you know Chekhov?
You know nothing.

Granat shakes you like a cocktail shaker, and when she puts you back down, you’ve become someone else.

This Seagull doesn’t spread its wings.
It rips you off the ground, shakes you at 300 km/h, then releases you in the Richelieu theater like a soaking wet cotton bag.

I am broken.
I am happy.
I’m going back.

— By Giulia Dobre
Paris, November 2025

Adaptation and direction by Elsa Granat
Translation by André Markowicz and Françoise Morvan
With Julie Sicard, Loïc Corbery, Bakary Sangaré, Nicolas Lormeau, Adeline d’Hermy, Julien Frison, Marina Hands, Birane Ba, Dominique Parent, and the Comédie-Française Academy: Édouard Blaimont and Blanche Sottou
Also starring Abel Bravard, Noam Butel, Sandro Butel, Marcus Grau as child Treplev (alternating)
Gabrielle Christophorov, Jeanne Mitre, Robin, Suzanne Morgensztern, Olympe Renard as child Macha (alternating)
Dramaturgy by Laure Grisinger
Set design by Suzanne Barbaud
Costumes by Marion Moinet
Lighting by Vera Martins
Sound by John M. Warts
Assistant director – Laurence Kélépikis
Assistant direction – Aristeo Tordesillas, Assistant set design – Anaïs Levieil, Assistant costumes – Aurélia Bonaque Ferrat