Daily Express
March 30, 1994
By Maureen Paton
The romantic folly in Ivan Turgenev's comedy about the midsummer madness of mid-life comes very close to farce. Yet in their long-overdue return to the West End stage, those marvellous players Helen Mirren and John Hurt give this deceptively simple drama poignancy and depth.
Yet she destroys innocence in the process: Her thoughtless cruelty turns the excitable Anna Livia Ryan, as her naive 17-year-old rival, into an embittered, shrewish and venomous woman overnight.
Meanwhile, Natalya herself has been adored for years by her husband's closest friend Rakitin, played by Hurt as if he were transfixed by a beautiful, unattainable dream of his youth.
Like Natalya, he is ceaselessly chasing rainbows. A poetic self-portrait of Turgenev himself, he is the perfect Russian equivalent of an English gentleman whose frustrations briefly flare up like fireworks but finally take refuge in wry philosophy.
The exaltations and the anti-climaxes of love are faithfully captured in Bill Bryden's beautifully orchestrated production.
The graceful Mirren gives the shallow Natalya dignity and pathos, while Hurt and Gawn Grainger as Natalya's bewildered husband compete for manly integrity in a most civilised confrontation over a drink.
John Standing seems miscast as the cynical peasant doctor, yet Joseph Fiennes has just the right gangly charm as the bemused youth who unwittingly precipitates the crisis.
