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Red Theater is thrilled to announce the cast and crew of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, directed and adapted by Ian Maryfield, running February 14 - March 15, 2026 at The Edge Off Broadway in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood, 1133 W. Catalpa Ave.

The production features Anne Sheridan Smith as Arkadina, Kason Chesky as Treplyov, Chuck Munro as Sorin, Jamie Herb as Nina, Joe Zarrow as Shamraev, Ana Ortiz-Monasterio Draa as Polina, Magdalena Dalzell as Masha, Josh Razavi as Trigorin, Chris Hainsworth as Dorn, Ben Murphy as Medvedenko, and Bobby Bowman as Yakov, understudied by Jack Hradecky, Ethan Smith, Jacqui Touchet, Pricilla Torres, Chuck Munro, Marisa Macella, Andrew Pond, and Bobby Bowman. 

Comments Artistic Directors Clare Brennan and Wyatt Kent, “After three back-to-back new play premieres, we’re thrilled to be returning to the classics with Chekhov’s The Seagull. Ian has done incredible work diving into this text and creating a lively and deeply inspired adaption, and we’re honored to be hosting his directorial debut at Red Theater. With a stellar cast showcasing some of the sharpest storefront actors working in Chicago right now, audiences are in for a surprisingly funny and deeply moving take on this beloved story.” 

The production team includes Mary T. Cahoon (assistant director), Tessa Huber (stage manager), Hunter Cole (scenic design), Suzanne Barnes (props design), Brenden Marble (lighting design), Victoria Nassif (intimacy design), Maggie McGlenn (costume design), Kate Schnetzer (sound design), Jonathan Hannau (composer), Skyler Simpson (poster design), Faith Decker (photographer), AJ Mueth (technical director), Mia Irwin (charge artist), Becca Holloway (casting director), Wyatt Kent and Clare Brennan (co-artistic directors).

PRODUCTION DETAILS

Title: The Seagull

Playwright: Anton Chekhov

Director / adaptor: Ian Maryfield

Cast: Anne Sheridan Smith (Arkadina), Kason Chesky (Treplyov), Chuck Munro (Sorin, u/s Shamraev), Jamie Herb (Nina), Joe Zarrow (Shamraev), Ana Ortiz-Monasterio Draa (Polina), Magdalena Dalzell (Masha), Josh Razavi (Trigorin), Chris Hainsworth (Dorn), Ben Murphy (Medvedenko), Bobby Bowman (Yakov, u/s Trigorin), Jack Hradecky (u/s Treplyov), Ethan Smith (u/s Medvedenko/Yakov), Jacqui Touchet (u/s Masha), Pricilla Torres (u/s NIna), Marisa Macella (u/s Arkadina/Polina), and Andrew Pond (u/s Dorn/Sorin).

Production Team: Mary T. Cahoon (assistant director), Tessa Huber (stage manager), Hunter Cole (scenic design), Suzanne Barnes (props design), Brenden Marble (lighting design), Victoria Nassif (intimacy design), Maggie McGlenn (costume design), Kate Schnetzer (sound design), Jonathan Hannau (composer), Skyler Simpson (poster design), Faith Decker (photographer), AJ Mueth (technical director), Mia Irwin (charge artist), Becca Holloway (casting director), Wyatt Kent and Clare Brennan (co-artistic directors).

Location: The Edge Off Broadway, 1133 W. Catalpa Ave, Chicago

Opening night: Saturday, February 14, 2026 @ 7:30P

Previews: Wednesday, February 11, Thursday, February 12, Friday, February 13, 2026 @ 7:30P

Run dates: Saturday, February 14 - Sunday, March 15, 2026

Curtain times: Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, & Saturdays @ 7:30P, Sundays @ 3P

Tickets: General admission tickets are $30. As part of Red’s mission to make theater by putting people first, a limited number of $10 access tickets are available for students, artists, or anyone on a tight budget. Purchasing a ticket at our $50 pay-it-forward tier helps us sustain Red’s accessibility efforts. Tickets are currently available at www.redtheater.org. Use code ACCESS at checkout for $10 tickets. Monday nights are Industry Nights! Artists and service industry professionals can use code ANTON for half price tickets. 

Direct Box Office Link: https://ci.ovationtix.com/35021/production/1264035  

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ian Maryfield | DIRECTOR / ADAPTOR – Ian (he/him) is an actor in Chicago and is grateful to be making his directorial debut with Red. Some Chicago credits: Translations (Writers Theatre); A Lie of the Mind (Raven Theatre); The Lord of the Rings Musical - US Premiere & New Zealand Tour, SS: Romeo & Juliet, SS: Comedy of Errors (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre); All Quiet on the Western Front (Red Tape Theatre); Photograph 51 u/s, The Originalist u/s (Court Theatre); Hamlet, Indoor Cats (Red Theater); Recipe for Disaster (Windy City Playhouse); The Nutcracker (The House Theatre). Regional credits: As You Like It (Montana Shakespeare in the Parks). Commercial credits: Illinois Lottery, State Farm, Wisconsin Lottery, Guinness, Legendary Whitetails, and Avocados From Mexico. Television credits: Chicago Fire (NBC). Ian holds a BFA with a minor in Directing from Oklahoma City University. Rep: Stewart Talent.

The House Theatre of Chicago artistic director Nate Allen introduces the world premiere of Diamond Dogs, an adaptation of a short story by Alastair Reynolds, by noting that it is “hard sci-fi” and a departure from the optimism usually implicit in House Theatre shows. Since a significant plot point of Diamond Dogs is people undergoing medical transformation into floating diamonds, I question how “hard” the science in this fiction actually is, but I think it is fair to say that the term signals that the story caters to a different set of expectations and interests than people usually expect from other genres. The House has also performed enough tragedies recently, including an adaptation of The Bacchae, that the optimism Allen refers to is meant in the sense that people have significant enough good qualities for their self-destruction to elicit sorrow. Diamond Dogs doesn’t really do that. Like Moby Dick, one of the stories best known for a pessimistic view of peoples’ graces to flaws ratio, Diamond Dogs depicts people slowly killing themselves in pursuit of an idiotic objective, but it depicts them in a manner which is far more frustrating.

The adaptors, called Althos Low (a group also known as Shanghai Low Theatricals led by Steve Pickering) are working from one of sixteen stories within Reynolds’s Revelation Space series. The backstory is long and complicated, but basically, hundreds of years from now, humans have colonized space, developed cybernetic enhancements to our bodies and intelligence, and can skip over the boring centuries traveling in between stars by freezing and unfreezing ourselves. Our viewpoint character, Richard Swift (John Henry Roberts), is still youthful at one hundred and seventy-two years old, and in mourning for his parents and dozens of other people who died in an experiment meant to achieve immortality. It seems that effective immortality has been achieved through other means anyway, but Swift refuses to criticize the dead, and while honoring them, is surprised to find their leader, his boyhood friend Roland Childe (Chris Hainsworth), still very much alive. Childe claims he has found the key to technology which could lead to resurrection, and asks Swift to join his exploration team.

Though no living aliens have been encountered thus far, traces of their long-dead civilizations have been found, and Childe is particularly interested in a structure he has named Blood Spire on a desolate planet he calls Golgotha. The Blood Spire is a floating spiral tower with a pile of corpses at its base. Childe claims to have spoken with a survivor who said that to climb within the tower, explorers must answer increasingly difficult mathematical questions as they move from room to room. A wrong answer results in mutilation, and repeated failures in death. Also, the Blood Spire’s AI is advanced enough to be considered sentient. The motley crew Childe has assembled consists of Swift, Swift’s ex-wife, Celestine (Katherine Keberlein), who has cybernetic implants to make her a math whiz and whom Swift has had suppressed in his memories, Forqueray (Abu Ansari), a captain, Hirz (Elana Elyce), a mercenary hacker, and Dr. Trintignant (Joey Steakley), a fugitive who kidnapped and murdered dozens of people while developing new cybernetics. They do not get along and their attempts to climb the tower do not go very well.

It takes until the beginning of the second act for somebody to point out that they do not have the slightest reason to believe that the tower is in any way related to their supposed objective, and even longer for someone to point out that there is no reason to believe the tower would ever allow them to win. However, it is also made clear early on that none of their objections matter. While Captain Ahab was a charismatic figure who inspired his men to believe in him and made them feel valued, Childe is a bully who immediately resorts to physical intimidation and openly delights in humiliating his crew and watching them quaver in terror of Blood Spire’s traps. But he’s only one man, and what really keeps the other five returning to the tower again and again is ego and spite. I was reminded while watching Diamond Dogs of a game my family played last Christmas which all of us hated, but which went on for hours because none of us would quit first or allow ourselves to lose. Diamond Dogs is about people who are supposedly very intelligent and truly loathe each other doing something with serious consequences for losing, but not winning.

As for the staging, it’s technically brilliant, but in service of a story which is claustrophobic and cerebral. Lee Keenan has supplied all sorts of special lights to create the Blood Spire environment, and several of these are integrated into Izumi Inaba’s very cool space costumes. Inaba and sound designer Sarah Espinoza also had the foresight to put microphones into the masks and helmets. Mary Robinette Kowal’s puppets are also visually impressive, and I gather that they are considerably more graceful and ghostly than what is described of the titular diamond dogs in Reynolds’s text. But Allen’s direction can’t avoid the Sisyphean nature of the plot and theme, so the visual elements’ power wears thin after not very long.

The six actors also do a fine job with broadly written characters. Steakley, in particular, has mastered an odd movement vocabulary, which he relies on because Dr. Trintignant always wears a mask and may not even have a face. Roberts is also a stand-out in a role which requires the audience to become increasingly disillusioned with his character. For fans of the Revelation Space series, Diamond Dogs is a must-see, and The House’s production values are used here in service of an interesting aesthetic rarely seen elsewhere. But the aggravating nature of the story makes it important for anybody who is not a hard sci-fi fan to know what they are getting into beforehand. Certain plot points late in the play which seemed too convenient or didn’t make sense made me even more frustrated. Diamond Dogs has its strong points, but is firmly situated within its niche.

Somewhat Recommended

Diamond Dogs is performed in the upstairs at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W Division St, Chicago, Illinois. Running time is two hours and twenty minutes with one intermission. Tickets are $30-35; to order, visit thehousetheatre.com or call 773-769-3832.

Performances are Thursdays-Saturdays at 8:00 pm and Sundays at 7:00 pm through March 5.