Two Romanian productions of A. P. Chekhov’s The Seagull

The article examines comparatively two Romanian stagings of Chekhov’s masterpiece The Seagull: the 1974 TV adaptation directed by Petre Sava Băleanu and the performance produced by Dumitru Acri" in 2023 for the “Radu Stanca” National Theatre in Sibiu. While my analysis reveals two completely di#erent artistic visions of the play – one austere, which strives to capture the essence of Chekhov’s text, and the other explosive, which aims to bring the Russian playwright into our contemporary context -, I believe these two visions are complementary and should be evaluated primarily in terms of internal coherence rather than by asserting one’s superiority over the other.