A little boy wanders through Michael Boyd’s Chekhov revival: helping with a scene change, carrying a big white balloon to serve as the moon in Act Two, finally sitting with the accidentally abandoned old manservant Firs. When the boy enters drenched, it becomes evident that he is the late son of Madame Ranevskaya whose drowning several years ago in the river by the cherry orchard was one reason for her first departure to Paris. Unseen as he is by the rest of the cast, he adds a dimension to their tragicomic flaw. Normally we see Chekhov’s characters as ignorant of the new world rushing upon them, but here they pay similarly little attention to the past, being entirely wrapped up in their own vapidities of the moment.

Former RSC supremo Boyd and his translator, Rory Mullarkey,  are both knowledgeable in Russian language and culture and have set out to provide a greater (though not a slavish) sense of this in their new version. We could surely do without the rigorous use of forename-plus-patronymic when characters refer to each other, but elsewhere matters grow much clearer. The mass of exposition in Act One has seldom been so fluid or so comprehensible, and Lopakhin’s reluctance to propose to the frustrated Varya becomes palpable when we see that he still carries a half-suppressed torch for her adoptive mother Ranevskaya (Kirsty Bushell, charming but self-centred as she should be). It is uncomfortable, though, to see Jude Owusu turn Lopakhin’s expected jubilation at having bought the orchard into an almost vicious reproach of the family for ignoring his plans to save their finances.

Tom Piper’s design anticipates the play’s visit next month to co-producers Manchester Royal Exchange by setting it in the round: galleries of seating are built upstage and the playing area moved forward. Colin Grenfell uses white washes to suggest the glare from the cherry blossom and auditorium lighting to remind us that the characters are located amid an entire world. Charlotta the showwoman even uses an upstage punter for a spot of ventriloquism. It all builds to a fuller, sharper Chekhovian portrait than English-speakers are used to.

Written for the Financial Times.