We are currently bombarded by Seagulls. But if Peter Stein's production doesn't have the comic clarity of Steven Pimlott's Chichester revival, it gets Edinburgh's International festival programme off to a richly symphonic start. And it does something rare: it matches Chekhov's psychological realism with densely layered visual and aural symbolism.
That symbolism is present in Ferdinand Wogerbauer's set, dominated by a portable screen reflecting the characters' shifting moods. Ferdinando Nicci's soundscape is also crucial; his great innovation is to punctuate the action with explosive gunshots. Konstantin's death, followed by a protracted, nerve-jangling violin note, therefore achieves a resonant finality.
Stein's achievement is to create a world in which the symbolism outwardly expresses the psychological chaos of the characters. We are reminded from the start, in Stein's translation, that Arkadina is "afraid her novelist may take a fancy to Nina". So Fiona Shaw presents us with a woman who is wreathed in actorly display yet is also in a state of nervous panic. And her final appalled reaction to the gunshot underlines her tragic awareness of the consequences of starving her son of love, care and money.
This kind of behavioural detail extends to all the characters. Iain Glen's Trigorin is a revelation in that, for once, we grasp that it is partly the novelist's self-loathing that leads him wantonly to destroy Nina. When Glen talks of his "literary storehouse", he beats his brains as if aware that he uses experience as a substitute for imagination. Jodhi May's Nina, desperate for celebrity seduction, is like a bird walking naively into the waiting trap.
You could quibble over details, but Stein gets most things right. By presenting Cillian Murphy's Konstantin as a serious writer, he highlights the continuity of his play's debate about the contest between spirit and matter. Above all, by holding the balance between realism and symbolism, Stein gives the action the eerie potency of a remembered dream.
· Until August 23. Box office: 0131-473 2000.
