Monday night saw the 100th anniversary of the first ever English language staging of a play by Chekhov.

The fact that The Seagull was produced in 1909 by the Glasgow Repertory Theatre company at the old Royalty theatre on the corner of Renfield Street and Sauchiehall Street gives an extra frisson to this new look at the play, performed by final-year acting students who make up RSAMD’s One Academy company.

As Chekhov’s most self-referential work, The Seagull is all too fitting for an educational institution. As young upstart Konstantin attempts to show off his naive form of theatrical experimentalism in the face of all-encroaching realism, his endeavours reflect a million scratch companies who go on to greatness.

Whether the 1909 production of George Calderon’s translation, seen here in a version by Stuart Paterson, possessed the same level of sexual tension between ageing actress Arkadina and her literary lover Trigorin as Olivia Knowles and Cathal Finnerty invest them with isn’t on record.

Hugh Hodgart and John Kazek’s production, however, turns the pair’s act three exchange into an explicitly unbuttoned display of affection, and is all the better for it.

This may be the show’s most passionate moment, but there is plenty of light and shade elsewhere.

Pierce Reid plays Konstantin as a precocious cherub everyone dotes on, from Jessica Biles’s Nina to black-clad Masha, played with a simmering sense of resentment by Helen Darbyshire.

Richard Evans’s leaf-strewn set opens up the stage’s full expanse for an exploration of failed potential, domestic disappointment and youthful optimism turned sour. A century after the play’s debut, this is as 21st century as it gets.

Star rating: ****