After putting a modern spin on the Oresteia, with memorable results, director Robert Icke takes on another classic. No samovars here: Icke has stripped back, anglicised and revitalised Chekhov, obliterating the space between story and spectator. His zoomed-in vision offers rich, intimate psychology, but it’s also naturalism bereft of context – present-day rural England as murky substitute for the remote 19^th-century Russian province facing seismic change.

Read my full Ham & High review here