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Brian Friel’s version of Turgenev treads lightly between humour and hurt as wayward passions rock a country house
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Stage — Arifa Akbar
A bored hausfrau languishing in her marriage. A confidante who secretly loves her. A charge that falls for the handsome new tutor and an assortment of ancillary characters mirroring the cross-crossing drama of suddenly flaring passions and unrequited love. Add a drawing room in a summer-house and it becomes clear to see how Ivan Turgenev’s mid-19th century play, set in the heart of the Russian countryside, might have served as a blueprint for Anton Chekhov’s tragicomedies some decades later.
Now add Brian Friel, whose sparkling script “after Turgenev” is spun so delicately that it appears both of its time and a universal story of pained love and marriage. The drama is simultaneously a comedy and a quiet – yes, Chekhovian – tragedy in which broad, entertaining characters rub alongside anguish and rejection (you can see the subtle influence of Turgenev’s play, in its pining mood, on Dancing at Lughnasa , written by Friel just two years later, in 1990).
The fine line between humour and hurt is as delicately trodden by director Lyndsey Turner and an able ensemble, headed up by Sophie Okonedo who plays Natalya. She feels stifled in her marriage to Arkady (Thomas Arnold) and rebuffing the love that family friend Michael (Alistair Petrie) professes to her, she falls for her son’s young tutor, Aleksey (Patrick Gibson, Irish-accented, almost childlike in his awe of her sophistication). Jealousy rises up between Natalya and her 17-year-old charge, Vera (Rachelle Diedericks, wonderfully guileless) who falls for him too, and the plot thickens with class resentments, manipulations and marriage proposals.
Light relief against the intoxicating passions comes through the constant card-playing of Arkady’s mother, Anna (Susan Brown), amusing shenanigans between servant couple, Katya and Matvey, and a German employee, Herr Schaaf (Mark Hadfield) who uses vocabulary like a Mr Malaprop.
This runs the risk of resembling a restoration play but the pace never becomes frenzied or farce-like. Okonedo is nuanced as always, playing Natalya as a haughty, controlling snob but still retaining compassion for her. There are a couple of strangely melodramatic moments of psychological exposition (using a disembodied voice on audio) in which characters speak to themselves in a heightened state of emotional turmoil. It is how we learn of Natalya’s intentions, and she sounds like a drawing room Lady Macbeth, although it does not jar as much as it could.
Lesley Travers’ stunning set design covers the stage with a glass box filled with foliage, which appears like a verdant bell-jar and lifts to reveal the drawing room, the green around it almost as alive as the grassy verge in Mike Bartlett’s play, Juniper Blood, staged at the Donmar last year.
Despite the many unhappy couples here, the notion of loving someone unreservedly is endorsed in its closing note, even if, or especially if, they don’t love you back. Anna speaks of her late husband’s infidelity and her decision to quietly accept it. Her son too averts his gaze from the fact that his wife may not love him and it appears, in its own way, an act of enduring love.
• At Donmar Warehouse, London , until 3 October
Now add Brian Friel, whose sparkling script “after Turgenev” is spun so delicately that it appears both of its time and a universal story of pained love and marriage. The drama is simultaneously a comedy and a quiet – yes, Chekhovian – tragedy in which broad, entertaining characters rub alongside anguish and rejection (you can see the subtle influence of Turgenev’s play, in its pining mood, on Dancing at Lughnasa , written by Friel just two years later, in 1990).
This report is published with credit to theguardian.com. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on theguardian.com →
Source: theguardian.com · Arifa Akbar. Published 3 Sept 2026, 02:00 pm.
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