Soulpepper’s Seagull announces its intentions even before the first line of dialogue is uttered. If you’ve ever wanted to see a profanity-laced Chekhov production featuring a simulated hand job – replete with cries of, “you’re coming, aren’t you?” – then you’ve come to the right place. Overwrought and distractingly vulgar, Soulpepper’s Seagull has some decent ideas lurking under its mountain of off-putting choices, but it’s a play that would have been better served by a full-blown modern remake, rather than the mishmash of old and new on display here. Judging by Soulpepper’s new production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, that approach must surely be preferable to what playwright Simon Stephens and director Daniel Brooks have attempted in their new “translation” of one of the great stage works of the 19th century. It’s an approach that seeks to honour the original, without directly tampering with its text.

Alternatingly witty and sorrowful, Stone’s Yerma is the latest in a relatively recent string of theatrical “remakes” – Polly Stenham’s Julie: After Strindberg being another – which borrow a theme and characters from a classic work, but retell it through a wholly modern script informed by wholly modern sensibilities. Earlier this year, Toronto’s Coal Mine Theatre brought us Yerma, Simon Stone’s excellent modern-day reimagining of Federico García Lorca’s 1934 play of the same name.

Russian play the seagull