Summerfolk reviews: What do the critics think of the National Theatre’s new production?

"Glorious Gorky is touching, funny and looks stunning"

"The new regime at the National Theatre has delivered its first bona fide hit in Robert Hastie’s five-star revival, rich in period detail"

"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."

"Even though there are 23 actors wandering around Peter McKintosh’s magnificent set, wooden pillars soaring upwards, the atmosphere is unfailingly intimate."

"Doon Mackichan is effortlessly amusing as Bassov’s insistently ethereal sister Kaleria"

"... 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."

"Gorky’s slow skewering of Russia’s first middle class"

"A terrific cast lifts a vast production at London’s National Theatre that emerges from Chekhov’s shadow to reach a magnificent climax"

"... at first, this new adaptation by siblings Nina and Moses Raine doesn’t do much to justify its return."

"The vast Olivier stage fills to the brim with people not having a good time, and telling us about it. So far, so sub-Chekhov. But be patient."

"Director Robert Hastie marshals this vast ensemble magnificently — and the acting from the two dozen-strong cast is uniformly terrific"

"... you still get the sense that dacha life is quite circular.... Then, slowly, it gets funnier and more complex."

"Maybe it shouldn’t need three hours to get to the point, but it’s a glorious final swell of a vast production, which sets the sun on these summerfolk, and hints at the horror that comes when the seasons change."

"A stunning ensemble bring Gorky's satire to life"

"A stellar cast update Maxim Gorky’s bittersweet tale in a sumptuous production at the National Theatre"

"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"

"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."

"Gorky’s script has been given an idiosyncratic and often ribald updating by siblings Nina Raine and Moses Raine that will be divisive but which I found hugely entertaining."

"I’ve no idea why Hastie chose to revive it now, but equally there’s no reason why classics should always come freighted with contemporary relevance. And this is a pure pleasure in terms of the acting and the staging."

"Paul Ready expertly shows how oafish geniality can shade into menace. It’s a joy to see Doon Mackichan back on stage"

"... overall this handsomely cast and mounted show reminded me of the work the late, great Howard Davies used to present in the Olivier: and that is a high compliment indeed."

"A once-in-a-generation chance to catch a Russian classic"

"The rarely staged Summerfolk offers a vision of Tsarist Russia to provide a timely sense of collective dread"

"... Robert Hastie presents this valuable curiosity, laced with a timely sense of collective dread, in terrific, painterly, ensemble style."

"The slight drawback? The script, by brother and sister Nina and Moses Raine, is loaded with distracting modern vernacular and some swearing... To be fair, some of their lines are quotably funny. But how much better would it have been if we had been allowed to connect with these bygone souls on their own terms? Otherwise, there’s much to savour."

"Justine Mitchell is just wonderful as Maria, an upright doctor thrown into a spin by the panting devotion of Varvara’s much younger, entertainingly caustic clerk of a brother Vlass (a show-stealing turn of moody impishness from Alex Lawther)."

"Caveats aside, do catch it; it’ll be a generation before it’s back."

"... Moses and Nina Raine’s pithy adaption"

"This version of Summerfolk, directed with verve by Robert Hastie, is 40 minutes shorter than its last incarnation on the National’s stage, when Trevor Nunn directed it some 25 years ago. But it is still staggeringly wordy."

"... 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."

"... Varvara (Sophie Rundle, wonderfully passive yet seething) sees the fatal ennui and waste but finds herself trapped within the misogynistic and limited world represented by her husband Bassov (Ready, charming, alarming and very funny)."

"Characters who initially seem harmless reveal themselves to be vicious, like Arthur Hughes, excellent as the builder Suslov, whose anger erupts into bile"

"All these encounters take place on Peter McKintosh’s handsome wooden set, with sturdy wooden pillars reaching skywards, that adapts beautifully to the different settings."

"An incandescent performance by Sophie Rundle is the high point of this luxuriant revival for Gorky’s sprawling classic"

"Maxim Gorky’s Summerfolk is the sort of esoteric classic that only gets staged very occasionally"

"... 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"

"Gradually, though, Robert Hastie’s revival does take shape thanks to some delicious luxury casting. Foremost is Sophie Rundle as the gorgeous, disaffected Varvara"

"The pleasures are pretty soapy throughout: essentially three hours of compulsive people watching."

"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"

"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"

"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"

"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."

"Lazy days of passion and privilege at Gorky’s doomed dacha"

"Writers Nina and Moses Raine add comedy and raunch to Maxim Gorky’s satire of the holidaying elite"

"This setting is stunningly designed by Peter McKintosh as the exoskeleton of a house, rather like the construction of a draughtsman’s sketch in the middle of the woods."

"The satire is less subtle than Chekhov’s and made more humorous in Robert Hastie’s period-dress production"

"... this new adaptation by sibling playwrights Nina and Moses Raine... has a comic lilt, with added swearing and raunch – but is faithful to the original, sometimes to the letter."

"Mitchell and Lawther are wonderful at depicting tormented love with a comedic bent, and there is an incredibly tender moment between Maria and daughter Sonya"

"At almost three hours, it is ambling but with sparks of intensity – rather like a summer’s day."

"Faithful yet ponderous"

"Memorable performances animate this sweeping but unfocused adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s satire set in the last days of the Russian Empire"

"This new version, reworked by siblings Nina and Moses Raine, deploys pleasingly rough-around-the-edges modern language to convey information about the characters’ various class backgrounds and differing degrees of emotional disaffection."

"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"

"Among a large, energetic ensemble, Sophie Rundle’s Varvara is a conspicuous point of self-contained calm... Alex Lawther is fascinatingly wretched as her brother Vlass, a frustrated failure miserably pining for Justine Mitchell’s tender Maria, unable to accept his love due to the age gap between them."

"Though the sprawling production’s energy flags at times and we never spend quite long enough on any one character, this remains a melancholy, impressionistic portrait of an era"

"Wealthy layabouts bludgeoning each other with uncomfortable truths"

"The National Theatre’s new revival of Maxim Gorky’s 1904 eat-the-rich satire is unsubtle but strikingly modern"

"... everyone in Maxim Gorky’s 1904 satire of a holidaying bourgeoisie (adroitly updated by Nina and Moses Raine) is too hot, too cross and too self-absorbed to enjoy their rural idyll"

"There are 18 named characters in Gorky’s play and that broad focus sometimes makes it hard to care too much about any of them"

"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"

"Still, the best moments of Summerfolk shine out, strikingly modern."