It is an attention to detail that lifts Stephen Unwin's production out of the ordinary. He may not have quite the same affinity for Chekhov as he does for Ibsen, whom he directs better than anyone else in Britain, but this is still a solidly satisfying evening.
At its heart is Prunella Scales's quietly pulsating Madame Ranevskaya, whose eternal girlishness is symptomatic of her reluctance to turn her back on the ghosts of the past and face up to the realities of the future. This is not the giddy creature that Ranevskaya is sometimes portrayed as, but a small, grave child who has never grown up and who is in constant need of protection from the truth. Her brother, Gaev, is even more infantile in an admirable performance from John Quentin that doesn't shirk from displaying all the character's most irritating aspects.
There are a string of effective, detailed characterisations here, from Frank Middlemass's exceptionally moving Firs, a piece of history left to die alone in the condemned house, and Simon Scardifield's Yasha, a boor with a polished veneer, to Amelda Brown's Charlotta, a lonely woman who cries the tears of the clown. Michael Feast's Lopakhin is terrific too, displaying his origins in every vowel and gauche movement of his hands and unable to resist marking his triumph when he buys the estate on which his father and grandfather were serfs. He has the sudden confidence of a man who knows he is the future, the coming thing.
Elsewhere, the production plays beautifully with light and shadow so each setting and rise of the sun feels like the end of one world and the start of the next, and it cleverly negotiates that tricky Chekhovian tightrope between the ridiculous and the sublime. Not a showy evening, but a true one.
At the Lyceum, Crewe (01270 537333), until Saturday, then tours to the Cambridge Arts Theatre (01223 503333), May 16-20, Guildford, Salford, Bath, Richmond and Greenwich.
