★★★★☆ The result, as here, is the portrayal of an inner intensity rare enough on the screen and gifted to a mere handful of stage artists in each generation.

★★★★☆ Directed by Sally Cookson and devised together by the company, The Three Seagulls is an imaginative, energetic production that has moments both of high drama and of brooding melancholy, but the dominant mood is one of celebration.

It tells the story of three young Bristol boys, friends since primary school, who enlist in the army to escape the banality and tick-tock drudgery of civilian life. Arthur has been driving cars off the container ships at Portbury docks: ‘… parking them in perfect lines, like headstones in a cemetery… Every day.