Cyril Teste and the Collectif MxM, who presented at Vidy a poignant filmic performance of Festen, revisit Chekhov's masterpiece, here translated by Olivier Cadiot. He offers a stimulating rereading of it, served by an ambitious use of live video and digital creation. In the distance, a dacha in which an idle summer slowly passes around the beautiful Arkadina.

The famous actress has invited Trigorin, a successful novelist with whom she is living a passionate and worldly love affair. In the foreground lies the theatre workshop of Treplev, her son, who displays jealous artistic ambitions and involves Nina, the young neighbour. Not far away, the lake serves as the site of each person's fantastical wanderings.

Cyril Teste, relating the text of the play to the Russian author's notebooks and correspondence, hypothesizes that Treplev's theatrical adventures, like his troubled relationship with Nina, merely conceal a burning love for his mother. And what if the absence of a father, as in Hamlet, and generational taboos, as in Festen – The Seagull concluding the director's trilogy – only serve to reinforce sinful desire? The Collectif MxM, once again exploring the mechanisms of the theatrical offstage, uses film and virtual images to follow the actors as closely as possible, bringing to life the hidden spaces of the theatre and the tormented souls of the characters.