Andrew Scott’s one-man Vanya is the performance of the year

Is solo Chekhov a vanity project? Quite possibly - but it's exquisite

Is this a high-end cultural vanity project? Quite possibly. Does Scott give the performance of the year in it? Absolutely. He held an excitable first-night audience spellbound in rapt silence for the 100-minute duration of Sam Yates’s beautiful production.

Let’s get the sole caveat out of the way first: anyone not fully au fait with this play should gen up beforehand to prevent bewilderment. The original, of course, centres upon on an unhappy family group, dominated by a capricious father, living on a fading country estate.

Chekhov’s drama, Stephens insists persuasively in a programme note, is timeless, a “story about sex and love and money and life” and Scott pierces right to the heart of this account of bored, frustrated and unhappy people fearing that life has passed them by, with exquisite emotional shading and complexity.

He potters onto the stage with the house lights on, shirt unbuttoned roguishly like a 1950s Hollywood matinée idol and smiles mischievously at us. “Let the fun begin,” he seems to be saying and so it does.There are subtle delineations to mark shifts from one character to another: ennui-suffused Ivan wears sunglasses, practical and resilient Sonia flicks a checked tea towel and Alexander’s sultry second wife Helena speaks deliberately slowly.

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