Set in a rural Russian house, the plot focuses on the romantic and artistic conflicts among an eclectic group of characters.

Fading leading lady Irina Arkadina has come to visit her brother Sorin, a retired civil servant in ailing health, with her lover, the successful hack writer Trigorin.

Her son, brooding experimental playwright Konstantin Treplev, adores the ingenue Nina, who in turn is mesmerized by Trigorin.

This kind of Secret Storm technique inevitably flattens out the nuances and the pauses that give depth to the tangled personal relationships.

As a result of the variety of styles, the movie turns into a series of individual confrontations that seem as isolated as specialty acts.

Lumet moves his camera incessantly to give the illusion of action, but uses fadeouts to duplicate the curtain falling at the end of an act .

Most disturbing of all, [he] and cinematographer Gerry Fisher have shot the whole film in softly gauzed pastel colors, thereby reducing Chekhov's intricate dramatic tapestry to the sleazy cheapness of a picture postcard.