Theatre review: Three Days in the Country

The summer of Patrick Marber Must Have Some Dirt On Rufus Norris concludes in the Lyttelton (although he hasn't had a show in The Artist Formerly Known As Shed yet, so maybe there's more to come?) This time Marber turns to Russian theatre and Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country, which he re-writes, directs and compacts down to Three Days in the Country. Rakitin (John Simm) is visiting old friends at their country estate, but while he's been not-so-secretly in love with Natalya (Amanda Drew) for the best part of 20 years, her husband and his best friend Arkady (John Light) never seems to have cottoned on. Rakitin arrives for another bout of declarations of love she never quite reciprocates, but there's a new dynamic now: The couple recently hired a new tutor for their son, the handsome and brooding Belyaev (Royce Pierreson.) All the women in the house seem to have fallen for him, including Natalya herself. In fact she's quite convinced that she's in love with Belyaev to an extent that she never felt for Rakitin or her husband.

Theatre review: Fathers and Sons

Concluding the Spring season at the Donmar Warehouse is a revival of Fathers and Sons, Brian Friel's adaptation of the Turgenev novel. Two outspoken St Petersburg students spend their summer returning to the rural homes they grew up in: First the recently-graduated Arkady (Joshua James) goes to his father's country estate, bringing with him his flatmate Bazarov (Seth Numrich.) Things aren't quite as Arkady remembered them - his father Nikolai (Anthony Calf) has a new baby with one of the servants, Fenichka (Caoilfhionn Dunne,) and on confirming that his son's happy for him prepares to marry her. Meanwhile Nikolai's lack of flair for managing his farm has led him to ask for advice from a neighbour, the wealthy widow Anna (Elaine Cassidy.) She and her sister Katya (Phoebe Sparrow) will catch the eye of the two young men, with very different results.

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.