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This sumptuous, bittersweet slice of turn-of-the-20th-century Russian life is just the sort of thing the Olivier stage was built for. Director Robert Hastie has assembled a stunning acting ensemble, bringing shade and texture to Maxim Gorky’s 1904 skewering of a feckless educated class, caught between Tsarism and the coming upheavals. Their travails are agony to them, hilarious to us, and it all unfolds on a gorgeous set by Peter McKintosh where the sun-bleached ribs of a summer dacha give way to a dappled, forested stream.
Gorky’s script has been given an idiosyncratic and often ribald updating by siblings Nina Raine and Moses Raine that will be divisive but which I found hugely entertaining. A play about inaction brings its own problems, however: as domestic spats and doomed flirtations play out, you wait in vain for something significant to happen. Perhaps it’s best to approach Summerfolk as a mood.
