Chekhov by numbers

Chekhov so dominates 19th-century Russian drama that Turgenev doesn’t get much of a look-in. His best known play, A Month in the Country, was written before Chekhov was born but Patrick Marber’s adaptation, with its new nickname, feels like Chekhov scripted by a Chekhov app. Turgenev’s characters, his atmosphere and his scenarios feel entirely familiar but they lack the tragicomic gestures that give Chekhov his unique appeal. There are no fluffed murders or dodged duelling challenges. No one tries and fails to blow his brains out. We’re on a rural estate where a group of crumbling, damaged sophisticates pootle around falling in love with each other. Every affair is doomed. The landowner’s friend covets the bored wife who craves the dashing tutor who’s keen on the penniless adopted daughter who herself is lusted after by the genial rich old neighbour. This non-stop spin cycle of thwarted romances could be the blueprint for a TV soap that never runs out of bubbles. It’s perfectly agreeable to sit through. Turgenev was a master of the polished aside. ‘How am I to survive,’ asks a cynical doctor, ‘if people simply get better?’ A dull guest is dismissed with, ‘Meeting him is the same as not meeting him.’ Life itself gets it in the neck: ‘Men rush about mistaking activity for purpose and then die mystified.’

Most popular

Stephen Daisley

David Lammy’s imperial overreach

But audiences raised on Chekhov will feel a little short-changed, even though the cast give it everything they’ve got. Buxom, drawling, gorgeous Amanda Drew plays the wife as a bit of posh tottie on Prozac. John Light, her cuckolded husband, comes across as a simmering human volcano with a voice that oozes chocolate rather than lava. John Simm, a superbly adequate performer, holds things together as Rakitin without startling anyone.