Middle classes’ overlong search for meaning 

Olivier Theatre, National Theatre

Gorky‘s rarely performed play from 1904 takes up where Chekhov left off and shows members of the new middle class enjoying a summer break. Many of the critics enjoyed the parallels with today’s professional class among the 23 well-acted characters. Quite a few thought it was a bit long, although that was mitigated by Moses and Nina Raine‘s lively adaptation and Robert Hastie‘s direction.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

5 stars ★★★★★

‘The new regime at the National has delivered its first bona fide hit’ declared The Times’ Clive Davis. ‘Robert Hastie’s glorious revival is rich in period detail yet the modern turns of phrase in Nina and Moses Raine’s version conjure up visions of 21st-century families bickering over what to watch on Netflix in a Tuscan Airbnb.’ He was clearly swept away: ‘the moments when they talk about the sense of rootlessness that haunts them even after they have risen in the world are almost unbearably poignant. This is a play that blends laughter with tears.’ 

4 stars ⭑⭑⭑⭑

The Standard‘s Nick Curtis summed up: ‘This sumptuous, bittersweet slice of turn-of-the-20th-century Russian life is just the sort of thing the Olivier stage was built for. Director Robert Hastie has assembled a stunning acting ensemble, bringing shade and texture to Maxim Gorky’s 1904 skewering of a feckless educated class, caught between Tsarism and the coming upheavals. Their travails are agony to them, hilarious to us, and it all unfolds on a gorgeous set by Peter McKintosh where the sun-bleached ribs of a summer dacha give way to a dappled, forested stream.’

WhatsOnStage‘s Sarah Crompton declared: ‘the Raine siblings have provided a contemporary translation full of humour and vigour, bringing some 23 characters to clear life and the production has an excellent cast, including Doon Mackichan as a hapless poet, Justine Mitchell as a crusading doctor and Paul Ready as a high-living lawyer, who are expert in the fine calibration of comedy, landing their words with precise force.’

Hearther Neill on The Arts Desk liked the way the Raine’s had trimmed the play’s length: ‘Speed serves the comedy well under Robert Hastie’s beautifully modulated direction, with characters constantly on the move, forming and dissolving small conversational groups, rarely at rest on the Olivier stage. This is a sprawling ensemble piece, featuring 23 well-distinguished characters, all of them dissatisfied with life, either longing for love or desperate to escape unsatisfactory marriages.’ She continued: ‘These people are almost all ridiculous and heading for a tragedy that they seem to intuit but not understand,which makes them at least recognisable, even forgivable. Peter McKintosh’s sets suggest simple interiors and a forest of tall plank-like trees. He has introduced very real water, however, for paddling and taking a dip, perhaps to emphasise the isolation of this group from what is happening in the world beyond their disappointing idyll.’

Gary Naylor for BroadwayWorld found: ‘It’s hard to like any of this menagerie of misanthropes, but it’s easy to be amused by them, Nina and Moses Raine’s adaptation sparkling with the language clever people use to talk to other clever people’. He saw the parallels with today’s audience: ‘There we were, like Vavara’s soi disant friends, ex-working class made good (well, goodish) by education and luck, grateful for the health and wealth it has brought but slightly perplexed as to why it doesn’t feel better’.

The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish was pleased to see it back on stage: ‘Robert Hastie presents this valuable curiosity, laced with a timely sense of collective dread, in terrific, painterly, ensemble style.’ But…’The slight drawback? The script, by brother and sister Nina and Moses Raine, is loaded with distracting modern vernacular and some swearing (including the C-word).’

Dominic Maxwell of The Sunday Times praised the acting: ‘Is the cast…the most exciting ensemble of actors you’ll see all year? Well, after watching them spend three hours quipping, spatting, seducing, repulsing, making points and missing the point, I can only say good luck finding any better.’

3 stars ⭑⭑⭑

LondonTheatre‘s Anya Ryan still found it a bit long: ‘At its centre lies a pressing question: does anything really matter when the world is falling apart? Yet, despite the hazy glow of this new version by siblings Nina Raine and Moses Raine, it’s a message that lands with a heavy hand. Over its lengthy three-hour running time … a cast of 23 characters cycles through the spotlight, each reaching for some sense of meaning.’

Dave Fargnoli of The Stage announced: ‘Seething with secret tensions and simmering resentments, this faithful yet ponderous adaptation captures the anxiety, humour and heartbreak of Maxim Gorky’s piercingly prescient 1904 study of the indolence of the bourgeois.’ He expanded: ‘It is a sprawling, deliberately slow-moving piece, with director Robert Hastie taking time to gradually build an atmosphere of suffocating, inescapable ennui. And although the production never achieves the necessary sense of impending doom, the play’s world remains intriguing: believable, feverish, stifling as the muggy heat of a summer day.’

Time Out‘s Andrzej Lukowski found it ‘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.’ He went on: ‘The pleasures are pretty soapy throughout: essentially three hours of compulsive people watching.’ He commented: ‘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’.

The Guardian‘s Arifa Akbar reacted with faint praise: ‘At almost three hours, it is ambling but with sparks of intensity – rather like a summer’s day. One character gives a hostile review of The Cherry Orchard: “Went on too long. Didn’t like it.” This goes on a little too long as well, although it is likable enough.’

The Independent and its reviewer Alice Saville returned to the theatre after a few weeks’ absence but she may wish she’d delayed her return: ‘Gorky’s play wears its themes on the surface. And its lack of subtlety doesn’t feel especially well-served by Robert Hastie’s production, which relies on broad performances and an open, cluttered-feeling set that doesn’t allow for more intimate moments between its warring characters. The structure is strange, too, with a tighter first half followed by a ballooning second part that never reaches the catharsis we seem to be building to…Still, the best moments of Summerfolk shine out, strikingly modern.’

Critics’ average rating 3.7⭑

Value rating 53 (Value rating combines the critics’ rating and the typical ticket price)

Summerfolk can be seen at the Olivier, National Theatre, until 29 April 2026. Buy tickets directly from nationaltheatre.org.uk

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