Nina's Review – A fascinating collection of terrifyingly aggressive tests for The Seagull

Battersea Arts Centre, London Women to play Chekhov's aspiring actress lead sessions with a director in a tense production of Smile. Introduce yourself. Say You're a Big Fan Now Do Whatever She Says These are the unspoken rules the women follow as they audition for turns in Caroline Williams' disturbing and infuriating production about men and power and depraved winged carnage. Women d

Mile S. Introduce yourself. Say You're a Big Fan Now Do Whatever She Says These are the unspoken rules the women follow as they audition for turns in Caroline Williams' disturbing and infuriating production about men and power and depraved winged carnage.

The women are auditioning for the role of Nina, an aspiring actress in Chekhov's The Seagull, in a pilot production directed by the ambitious Goran Wonderkind (Rovan Polonsky). Using live cameras in his show, he is the kind of director who ignores the need for an intimacy coordinator while claiming credit for having one in the room.

As the women file, Goran's demands on his Ninas (Maya Bartley-Ody, Nina Bowers, Samantha Bigman and Gemma Barnett) become increasingly aggressive. They range from small, needle-point questions that might be considered permissible to a truth-seeker, to commands so terrifying they could split a person in half. He wants to tell me your shots. Show me what it looks like. Women are eager to be happy, they are eager to work and Goran has the power to make them stars. Tim (Joseph Payne), the author, is a timid onlooker who reads the sour and depressing Constantine as Chekhov's play drifts both out of focus and out of reality.

As the tension builds, our play, co-directed by Williams and Deborah Pearson, grows in scale and beauty. Bowers' original and heartbreaking birth scene unlocks the depths of the show's brooding fury, while the show's unsettling self-indulgence is almost too hard to watch, but the show demands to be seen.

The ultimate power switch is an act of art to make a wish come true. It might be what we've been hoping for for these women, but it feels absurd for the world the show has so painstakingly crafted. Williams and Pearson's unflinching direction is most compelling in its tragic brutality. Why does every woman want to be an actress?