Summerfolk review – lazy days of passion and privilege at Gorky’s doomed dacha

Adelle Leonce (Yulia) and Sophie Rundle (Varvara) in Summerfolk. at the National’s Olivier theatre. Photograph: Johan Persson

In 1898, Maxim Gorky wrote a fan letter to Anton Chekhov. Gorky was just starting out, and the leading light in Russian theatre convinced him to try his hand at plays. Summerfolk was written a few years later as a response to The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov’s elegiac last play about the downfall of the ruling class.

It features languid members of the elite gathering for the summer at a dacha belonging to Sergei Bassov (Paul Ready) and his wife, Varvara (Sophie Rundle). This setting is stunningly designed by Peter McKintosh as the exoskeleton of a house, rather like the construction of a draughtsman’s sketch in the middle of the woods.