Maxim Gorky’s Summerfolk is the sort of esoteric classic that only gets staged very occasionally: I think this NT revival is the third UK production ever, and the first this century.
It’s not hard to see either the reason for its reputation or its infrequent staging. Concerning a group of dissolute nouveau-riche Russians spending a frivolous summer arguing among themselves as societal storm clouds gather, it is pretty damn Chekhovian.
On the other hand its enormous cast and prodigious uncut running time mean it’s well beyond the means of most theatres to put on: it has only ever been staged here by the NT and RSC.
This new adaptation by Nina and Moses Raine is a full hour shorter than its previous National Theatre outing in 1999. It’s still overwhelming at first: it feels like you’ve been plunged into a sprawling existential soap opera, teeming with characters and plot lines that have been running for years that you’re having to familiarise yourself with on the fly.
Gradually, though, Robert Hastie’s revival does take shape thanks to some delicious luxury casting. Foremost is Sophie Rundle as the gorgeous, disaffected Varvara, who rails with mounting fury against… everything basically. The rootless insubstantiality of her peers; the annoying men who insist on adoring her; her awful husband Sergei, very entertainingly played as a gravelly voiced boor by Paul Ready.
The pleasures are pretty soapy throughout: essentially three hours of compulsive people watching. The 22 characters run the gamut from Adelle Leonce’s ‘free spirited’ she’s having an affair) Yulia and her magnificently ghastly husband, Pyotr (Arthur Hughes’) to Varvara’s dishevelled younger brother Vlass (Alex Lawther) and his very sweet, very genuine love for Justine Mitchell’s older doctor Maria.
What really marks Summerfolk – and this version in particular – out is two things.
First, the Raine siblings – and you have to think Nina may have been the driver here – have really accentuated the play’s feminist edge, as the righteously exasperated Varvara rails with increasing vehemence against the idiot men in her life, ever more furious at the crude self-interest of her husband, the feebleness of her nice guy suitor Pavel (Pip Carter) and the crushing disappointment of Yakov (Daniel Lapaine), the acclaimed author who she used to idolise but up close turns out to be exactly like every other man.
Second, every character with an ounce of self-refection is gripped by a raging scepticism as to the point of their own existences. This is often very funny. But this theme reaches a potent boiling point at the climax, as Varvara condemns her peers as empty and transient – they are just meaningless good time ‘summerfolk’ – in a way that clearly hints at the turmoil in the Russian society of the day and the devastation that would soon be unleashed.
Blessed by a gorgeous wooden Peter McKintosh set surrounded - in the second half - by dappled water, Hastie’s production at best has a bucolic but beautifully deadpan rhythm.
As with his recent Hamlet, though, I couldn’t help but feel that he’s not that good at seizing control of large ensemble casts: Rundle electrifies the stage anytime she steps on it, but apart from that it can feel like a freewheeling blur of similarly dressed people bickering for three hours. The Raines’ adaptation is modern, witty and at best bracingly pungent but it feels a bit inbetween-y in tone, neither really quite set in 1904 Russia, nor our present - maybe it wouldn’t be an issue if Hastie was interested in doing something more interesting with the setting, but for all the handsomeness of McKintosh’s sets we’re only really a samovar away from generic English-theatre-company-stages-Chekhov vibes.
And of course Chekhov is the melancholically amusing elephant in the bittersweet room here. His plays about the same sort of people set in the same sort of time are so deathlessly popular – not to mention, good – that it’s hard not to compare and contrast. Summerfolk is a fine play but it’s the moments where this production feels less like Chekhov – when it’s broader or angrier – that it really distinguishes itself. Still, history suggests we’re looking at something like a 25-year gap until it gets staged again. So this is a generational production, really, and whatever its flaws are, they shouldn’t put you off seeing the sort of luxury revival that the NT was made for.
