Cheek by Jowl: never mannered or stale. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
The chance to see Chekhov performed in London in Russian comes along quite rarely, rather like the occasional deliveries of toilet paper I remember seeing in Moscow shops under Brezhnev.
Not surprisingly, people were queueing like Soviet shoppers for returns to see Declan Donnellan's Cheek by Jowl company of Russian actors performing Three Sisters. It was a knockout.
For me, one of the tests of a great production of a classic work is whether I feel that I'm seeing the play as if for the first time. That's what I felt last night. I left the theatre feeling that I had discovered all kinds of hidden depths in a play that I thought I knew backwards, and which I first read for my Russian A-level about four decades ago.
I don't believe that Russian actors are uniquely qualified to perform Chekhov, though there's something in his subtle language that gets lost even in the best English translations. Russians know how to use a samovar and down a glass of vodka, just as English actors know how to wave a cricket bat around. Like Lorca, whose characters are always Spanish, Chekhov's characters are defined by the social and historical context of provincial Russia around 1900.
As in all Cheek by Jowl productions, Donnellan takes the play apart in radical fashion before reassembling it, but he never makes the mistake of forgetting where and when it is set. Chekhov, like Shakespeare, wrote with such rich layers of meaning and subtext that a director can push scenes in almost any direction and still be on firm ground. There is no single right way to play Chekhov; Peter Stein makes him slow, symbolic and gloomy, while the Moscow Arts Theatre tradition is one of tragic realism. English companies have often concentrated on the comedy and missed the darker side of his writing. But anyone who tries to wrench the plays out of time and place does so at their peril. I was reminded of how Katie Mitchell's production of The Seagull at the National Theatre last year tried to update the play to the 1930s with unfortunate results.
I can't attempt to analyse exactly how Donnellan conjures up his magic, though it's clear he encourages actors to take risks and dig much deeper than they are used to in developing their characters. I once tried reading his book on acting, but not being an actor myself, I understood very little of it.
Cheek by Jowl have been in business under his leadership since 1981, and have developed a highly distinctive style of playing that never seems mannered or stale.
There are some extraordinary insights, particularly in the characterisation of the three sisters, who in the Russian tradition are often played as idealised tragic heroines. Donnellan finds extra layers of irony in Chekhov's writing. So when schoolteacher Olga complains she is tired, it's something of an affectation, the equivalent of "I'm, like, so stressed!" The sisters display a streak of genteel snobbery towards the arriviste Natasha, their sister-in-law, and mimic her behind her back. They recoil in horror as Natasha paws them physically with insincere affection. Masha, trapped in a loveless marriage to a boring schoolmaster, smiles brightly for most of the play until she finally breaks down in despair.
And when the odious Natasha punctures the unbearable tension of the final scene by finding a stray fork lying around, she picks it up and waves it around like a dagger. No, it's not in the stage directions, but it's totally true to character.
