Uncle Vanya

Published Monday 4 February 2008 at 13:15 by John Thaxter

Glory be! A new theatre opens with excellent acoustics, comfortable knee-room and an enjoyable new staging of Chekhov’s masterpiece given a colloquial translation that stays true to the original, while rewarding a fine cast with fresh opportunities for conversational comedy.

Behind a comic front Nicholas Le Prevost’s superb portrayal of Vanya is on a cynical slow boil from the start. But his sudden angry outburst against his brother-in-law - Ronald Pickup as the insensitive Serebryakov - is condemned as a breach of family good behaviour which turns to farce with his futile pistol fusillade.

As the saddle-weary district doctor, neglecting his patients, Neal Pearson’s Astrov combines toughness with keen intelligence, giving his eco-friendly lecture to an unheeding Yelena before making his dive, while he ignores Loo Brealey’s besotted, housebound Sonya.

Disturbingly beautiful as Yelena, Michelle Dockery comes to the role with echoes of her recent Eliza Doolittle. While often caressing her cheek in a nervous gesture, this is no languid wife bored with an unsatisfactory marriage. Instead she plays a pragmatic woman of independent mind, powerfully conveyed in a conversational aside, delivered direct to the audience, as she spells out the lovelorn Sonya’s hopeless situation.

In relative terms the Rose stage is as wide as the Olivier, broken only by a Godot-like single tree off-centre. But Peter Hall uses the full width of the acting space. And here sight line problems emerge that need urgent attention.

During the interval several critics, seated in the circle, complained of masked views of the stage. But those in the unraked front stalls were worse off - I saw less than a third of the action, my side views totally blocked by a forest of heads - tricky when, for this play, it is vital to know whether other characters are eavesdropping on the intimate exchanges. One obvious solution would be to raise the low-lying stage floor by a foot or two.