Ivanov

Donmar director Grandage (with the help of Tom Stoppard's lean, mean adaptation) takes Chekhov's immature but resonant account of despair and makes it absolutely solid with quality. Ivanov is Hamlet with a mid-life crisis, taking out his frustrations on the dying wife he no longer loves until he loathes himself. Branagh makes an impressive golden husk of a man whose soul's gone oddly awol. And Gina McKee as his tubercular wife Anna suffers with exquisite grace. Quite rightly, hers is the only suffering that play and production don't laugh at. Branagh does have one moment of bulk-shattering despair, but his suicidally monotonous drone– and the crushing bore that he becomes for his friends and the teenage girl who falls for him – are achingly familiar and very funny, thanks especially to a superb supporting cast.