The Seagull has hovered over the ADC’s Spring programme since it was announced, and the attention it has received ensured that it sold out long ago.

However, it was disappointing to see so many careless blunders from this experienced cast, including slipped lines and clumsiness with props. The intimacy of Nina’s (Lily Cole’s) secret gift (an inscribed medallion) to Trigorin (Simon Haines) was undercut by the sound of it rolling loudly across the length of the stage for the ten agonising seconds after it was accidentally dropped. Technical production was also frustrating. The set of white walls as bare as the trees between them seemed to aspire to a simple minimalism, but never quite committed; hedging instead with the distractions of a gaudy table-cloth pattern, bright curtain and ornate yellow garland. A lighting blunder left the second bow in darkness, and the sound design was insensitive, too often drowning out the dialogue; or providing poorly chosen music, which was incoherently united. What I think was meant to be Dream a Little Dream of Me was hummed by a chorus of the house’s staff; Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat nudged Constantin’s off-stage introspection into cliché; Bizet’s Habanerna pushed what could have been a powerful suicide attempt over into cute melodrama; and Neil Young’s Birds smothered the resonance of the ending.

Simon Haines deserves credit for undertaking the ambitious project of translating the play, but his version often felt as though it dragged rather than redirected Chekhov towards 2011. At the risk of allying myself too closely with the conservative ‘old forms’ the play so riles against, the amount of swearing added was simply unnecessary, and stinted the action instead of focusing it. Similarly, Constantin’s lament on his mother’s fame (‘I wish she was just my mum’) should have been left undisturbed in whichever Hollywood summer blockbuster it was lifted from.

Nicola Marsh was at her best when encouraging Constantin of his talent, but the unusual casting decision (Chekhov’s Dorn is male) made the pass which the married Paulina (Holly Cracknell) makes at her become an unconvincing lesbian one. In other places, the smiles she struggled to hold back made her seem a little too aware of the audience’s appreciation of her wit, which thwarted what might have been a superbly deadpan delivery.

Haines never quite settled as Trigorin. The almost manic intensity with which he spoke about his writing jarred with the image in which we otherwise invest of him as the old-fashioned, mainstream writer. Between these oscillations, the eyebrow acrobatics and frankly sinister over-the-shoulder wink with which he seduces Nina made it difficult to condone their affair, for all its endearing passion.

The best acting was the worst. Cole was great in Constantin’s embarrassing play, milking its empty excess with a captivating presence which culminated in a series of laughable (in the best possible way) convulsions. She was well-supported by an anxious Constantin, who supplies forgotten lines and fights to silence an unreceptive household audience. Their interplay does not feature in other versions I have encountered, and was one point at which the translation did add something. Another fantastic scene came in the third act, between Constantin and his mother, Arkadina (Victoria Ball), which achieved the perfect level of Oedipal awkwardness. Sadly though, this too was eventually shattered by a feeble and unnecessary ‘I love you’.

To use Constantin’s own phrase, The Seagull shows ‘flashes of competence’. Ultimately, however, this production was even more disappointing than it was anticipated.