Black Coffee Theatre is bringing The Seagull by Anton Chekhov to Bradford this spring.

The first of what are generally considered to be the four major plays by the Russian dramatist, The Seagull was written in 1895. It dramatises the romantic and artistic conflicts between the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin Tréplev, and famous middlebrow story writer Trigorin.

Black Coffee’s adaptation relocates the action to 1920s England, when the ‘Bright Young Things’ are fuelled by the boom of jazz, fashion and the arts, but on a country estate there is only a lake, and the people around it yearn for something more.

“We intend to create a fresh, concise story for a modern audience who may not be familiar with the romantic and dramatic devices that Chekhov uses, while still retaining the feel and power of the original,” says director Jonathan Holby. “I wanted to set it in a period that a modern audience could identify with.”

The Seagull is performed at the Alhambra Studio on April 9. For tickets ring (01274) 432000.