Theatre review Stellar cast balances the comic tragedy of thwarted lives

Chekhov described his country-house drama as a comedy, creating its serious yet silly characters "not without pleasure". Still, it is a test of tone and performance to render with humour a story that scales so much thwarted life.

- Arifa Akbar

Thomas Ostermeier and Duncan Macmillan's new version magically balances lightness, wit and melancholy from the off, as characters gather at a country estate in hipsterish modern dress.

There is the imperious actor Arkadina (Cate Blanchett) and her lover, Trigorin (Tom Burke), a famous writer who arrives from the city; her brother Sorin (Jason Watkins), whose health is failing, and her overshadowed son, Konstantin (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who aspires to be a writer and, in protest perhaps, disapproves of the middlebrow appeal of his mother's art. Love's arrows shoot in all the wrong directions and every cast member reflects the pain of injury alongside the laughs.