Meeuw
A family gathers at their holiday home. You follow their dreams and desires, but also witness their sorrow and jealousy. The young people try to make their own voices heard, but the older generation prefers to keep things as they are. Director Nina Spijkers brings Chekhov’s comedy The Seagull to life in a new way.
A young, ambitious writer (Emma Buysse) presents her first play, her boyfriend (Alex Hendrickx) plays the lead role. Together, they want to change the world with their performance. Her father and his girlfriend (Jaap Spijkers and Tamar van den Dop), themselves also a famous actor and writer, prefer to keep everything as it was. Is there room for a new voice, or does the previous generation keep the door closed?
Genderswap classics: Just as with Het temmen van de feeks and Coriolanus, director Nina Spijkers opts for a genderswap of several important roles. “By letting women play men’s roles and vice versa, a 130-year-old play feels as if it were written yesterday. They remain Tsjechov’s words, but now with even more powerful female roles and more entry points for humor.”
Alive and dangerously funny: With a new, bold perspective, director Nina Spijkers shows how alive and dangerously funny Tsjechov can be: “Tsjechov is one of my favorite writers, because he is perhaps the best analyst of the human soul to have ever written for the stage. He called his play a comedy. I am very much looking forward to capturing that lightness on stage.”
Theatre with a speech-to-text interpreter
A speech-to-text interpreter will be present at Meeuw by Het Nationale Theater on Wednesday, 18 November 2026. A speech-to-text interpreter types the text spoken on stage live. You can read along with the text of the performance on a tablet attached to the backrest of the seat in front of you. The speech-to-text interpreter also indicates when things happen that are only audible. For example, when there is laughter or when music is playing.
We have made a limited number of seats with a good view of the stage available for this. Book your tickets online directly or send an email to kassa@orpheus.nl.
Trigger warning
The performance contains suicide, the sound of a pistol shot three times, and the use of herbal cigarettes.
