In 1895, at age 35, Anton Chekhov wrote the first of his four major plays—The Seagull. A comedy and a drama, it’s about the attractions and conflicts between a writer, an ingenue, an actress past her prime, and the actress’s son. The 1896 premiere was a complete flop, so much so that Chekhov said, “I thought that if I had written and put on the stage a play so obviously brimming over with monstrous defects, I had lost all instinct and that, therefore, my machinery must have gone wrong for good.” His “machinery” had, in fact, not gone wrong, and later stagings of the show brought success. Reinterpreted with a modern twist by Anya Reiss, the play opens in London with Emilia Clarke making her West End debut as young Nina. Clarke’s Game of Thrones co-star Indira Varma plays the fading actress. Jamie Lloyd directs. —Jensen Davis