Chekhov's late masterpiece examines human behaviour in all of its beautiful, terrible, laughable contradiction. Following his reimagining of Oresteia (Almeida / West End), Almeida Associate Director Robert Icke directs a new production of Chekhov's greatest play.

Things your life could be:
(1) a farce.
(2) a tragedy.
(3) pointless.
(4) all of the above.

Things you could do about it:
(1) keep living.
(2) stop living.
(3) stop someone else living.
(4) nothing.

Even so, what has your life been worth?

It challenges the patriarchal assumptions of the playwright’s tragic trilogy. It dispenses with staging conventions. Yet this is not destruction but revelation. You can almost see the dust flying off the old master. No. 1 Play of 2015. * The Observer *
What a piece of theatre this is… Calchas says of the play: ‘‘this has all happened before, and more than once’’. But not with this theatrical potency, not in my lifetime, I don’t think.’ No. 1 Play of 2015. * Time Out *

Robert Icke is a writer and theatre director. He was the Artistic Director of the Arden Theatre Company from 2003-7 and of the Swan Theatre Company from 2005-8. From 2010-13 he was Associate Director at Headlong, where he worked on all of the company's productions and directed three of his own. He is currently Associate Director at the Almeida alongside Artistic Director Rupert Goold. 1984 won Best Director at the UK Theatre Awards 2014, Best Director at the Liverpool Arts Awards 2013, and was nominated for Best New Play at the 2014 Olivier Awards. In 2014, Robert was selected as one of the hospital club's 100 most influential and innovative people working across Britain's creative industries. His adaptation of Oresteia received universal critical acclaim when it premiered at the Almeida and transferred to the West End.