Dachniki meaning ‘dacha people’ is the Russian title of the National Theatre’s new production of Gorky’s sprawling 1905 drama. Nina and Moses Raine, who adapted the play, chose the flavourless title Summerfolk which doesn’t quite capture the play’s distinctive Russian atmosphere of ennui, intellectual rumination and despair. However, their perky, supple and idiomatic dialogue works very well.

Gorky appears to have written the script as a feverish homage to Chekhov, who died in 1904, and he pinched numerous characters and plot twists from his mentor. The beautiful, vain and sexually inert Varvara is a copy of Yelena in Uncle Vanya. Kaleria, the nervous actress who performs amateur verse for her friends, is inspired by Nina in The Seagull. And the cynical lawyer’s clerk, Vlass, is a version of Trofimov in The Cherry Orchard.

The setting and the personalities could become a Netflix series that never ends

The setting and the personalities could become a Netflix series that never ends

Gorky’s personalities chat about love, money and the meaning of life but they seem far more pompous and pretentious than Chekhov’s characters. Are we supposed to admire these people, to laugh at them or to despise them? Hard to say. And it’s unclear who the main character is until the beautiful widow Maria Lvovna (Justine........

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