RHOSYGILWEN’S forthcoming staging of Fluellen Theatre’s production of The Seagull on Tuesday, October 3 comes at a crucial point in Russian history.

For president Vladimir Putin’s current crackdown on all dissent is a timely reminder that the great Russian writers have always served as the conscience of the nation.

Set in Ukraine, Anton Chekhov’s celebrated play is one of unfulfilled dreams that contains moments of comedy which do not detract from the despair within the text.

The play’s four main characters are a dysfunctional bunch with convoluted romantic entanglements.

Fading actress Irina Arkadina, desperately clings to previous glories. Popular author Boris Trigorin enjoys commercial success, yet feels it is all hollow.

Irina’s son Konstantin pursues his dream of writing symbolist plays, but his plays are off-the-wall. Nina is determined to be an actress, but her talent is second-rate.

In a Chekhovian mix of the mundane and the melodramatic, the play reaches its shattering conclusion in the middle of a bingo game… Accomplished local pianist Henry Ward will perform brief interludes of Russian romantic piano music to set the atmosphere.

Chekhov began writing The Seagull in 1895 with Russia in social turmoil.

The year before, Tsar Alexander III had died at 49, possibly due to internal injuries he had suffered in October 1888, when the Imperial train was blown up by revolutionaries.

Chekhov was himself under the suspicion of the Tsarist authorities for his liberal views. Some dialogue in The Seagull was actually censored and only re-discovered and restored to the text after the fall of the Soviet Union.

In 1890 Chekhov visited the penal colony of Sakhalin Island to interview prisoners and report on the abuses they suffered.

On his return home he actively improved conditions on his own modest estate, mounting strenuous relief efforts during the devastating famine and resulting typhoid epidemic of 1892-93 by building schools and clinics. The Seagull’s premiere in 1896 was a famous disaster. The audience booed and hissed. The leading lady was so intimidated that she lost her voice. Chekhov took refuge behind the scenes.

It was only when the avant-garde Konstantin Stanislavski directed The Seagull in 1898 for the Moscow Art Theatre that it became a sensational success.

Based at Swansea’s Grand Theatre, Fluellen are familiar to local audiences due to their annual performances at Theatr Gwaun in Fishguard. The Seagull will be the company`s 80th production in their 23-year history.