Three generations of a large and brilliant theatrical clan spend each summer at their sprawling family home rehearsing and staging a new production that they then perform for an exclusive audience at season's end. This year the play is Chekhov's "The Seagull" and, oddly enough, the family finds itself in a Chekhovian drama of its own when, due to economic circumstances, they are forced to sell their decades-old family retreat. On the last weekend of their last summer together, the family, led by matriarch Helena, is visited by Oona, a rising Hollywood film star who is fleeing fame and fortune in pursuit of a higher artistic purpose. Undeterred by her own lack of theatrical credentials, Oona nonetheless proves that she has "a method" of her own--both onstage and off-and slowly wreaks havoc on the illustrious, insular, and sometimes insane assemblage of actors, directors, and playwrights who comprise this extraordinary gathering of family and friends.