Take a raincheck on Chekhov

Benedict Andrews’ new adaptation of Chekhov’s classic – he also directs – is, to put it mildly, mucked about. He thinks it’s a jolly wheeze to have the actors sitting among the audience and suddenly standing up and heading out on to the stage, doing their bit and then sitting down again.

They are all dressed in trendy modern gear, double up as movers of props, and speak in a modern vernacular, to the extent of periodically resorting to four-letter words.

Not an awful lot happens in the original play – an aristocratic Russian landowner decides to sell off the family estate, and that’s about it – and without the Chekhovian dialogue and a nice recreation of the grand old house they all live in, Andrews has managed only to emphasise the limitations of the story and the result is a production that is interminably boring.

As the aristocratic old matriarch forced to sell up, Nina Hoss does her best to command attention, but on the bare stage, among so much gimmickry, it’s well nigh impossible for her to communicate the dignified sense of despair the part requires. There’s meanwhile too much of Del Boy in Adeel Akhtar’s pushy arriviste who wants to buy her land.

The only one who manages to come out of it all with any dignity is the ever-reliable June Watson as an ancient retainer and even she curls up and falls asleep towards the end. I assume she was acting, but, if she wasn’t, I can hardly blame her.