CLASS IS PERMANENT

A new revival of Maxim Gorky’s 1904 satire ‘Summerfolk’ is unsubtle but still strikingly relevant, writes Alice Saville

- Alice Saville

National Theatre, London

It’s summer in the fabled Russian countryside, and the mosquitoes are nibbling at an esteemed industrialist’s bald patch. The forests might be shady and the white dresses wonderfully floaty, but everyone in Maxim Gorky’s 1904 satire of a holidaying bourgeoisie (adroitly updated by Nina and Moses Raine) is too hot, too cross and too self-absorbed to enjoy their rural idyll. Summerfolk feels like a messy riposte to Chekhov’s elegant, beautifully structured classic The Cherry Orchard - full of rage, not nostalgia, for a way of life that was about to be lost forever.