Strong performances in a slightly wonky production: Uncle Vanya reviewed

Uncle Vanya opens with a puzzle. Is the action set in the early 20th century or right now? The furnishings might be modern purchases or inherited antiques, and the costumes are also styled ambiguously. It soon becomes clear from Conor McPherson’s script, which uses colloquialisms like ‘wanging on’, that this is a contemporary version. It’s always a risk to update Chekhov and the director Ian Rickson pulls it off. Never once did I wonder why these chattering idlers didn’t have broadband or mobile phones.

But the casting is awry. Vanya is a middle-aged Hamlet, a thinker, an observer, whose dreams are smashed to pieces in the course of the action. And because he sees himself as a thwarted romantic and a failed intellectual he needs to suggest some traces of philosophical power and sexual competence. Toby Jones plays him as a crumpled grouch, an articulate but irascible back-biter who hangs around the kitchen table making sarky comments about his shambolic relatives.