Theatre review: Fortune's Fool

I wonder what kind of play Fortune's Fool, currently playing at the Old Vic, is? That's not a rhetorical question, I've just sat through the damn thing and I'm none the wiser. Tragicomedy is obviously what's being aimed for, but what's actually landed on the Old Vic's stage is anybody's guess. After 7 years in St Petersburg, Olga ( Lucy Briggs-Owen) is returning to the country estate she's sole inheritor of. She's bringing her new husband Pavel (Alexander Vlahos) and, this being late Tsarist Russia, the new man of the house will have the final say in all domestic matters. This could be bad news for Vasilly Kuzovkin (Iain Glen,) an impoverished gentleman whose own estates have been tied up in legal wrangles for decades. Vasilly has lived as a guest of the family for 20 years, but Pavel would be within his rights to turf him out. When a bullying neighbour gets him drunk for his own amusement, Vasilly reveals a family secret that makes his welcome wear out all the sooner.

Theatre review: Longing

As well as his better-known work for the theatre, Anton Chekhov was also a prolific writer of short stories, and it's two of these that William Boyd uses to fashion a new Chekhov play, Longing. Successful lawyer Kolia (Iain Glen) has been invited back to a small town where he spent much of his childhood, by two old friends, Tania (Natasha Little) and Varia (Tamsin Greig.) But the women don't just want to catch up - Tania's alcoholic husband Sergei (Alan Cox) has frittered away her fortune on doomed business deals, and mortgaged the estate to the hilt. Everything is due to be repossessed within days, and Tania hopes that Kolia can help come up with a solution. But he has distractions of his own as Tania's teenage sister Natasha (Eve Ponsonby) has fallen for the much older man.