Theatreguide.London
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The Theatreguide.London Review
Summerfolk
Olivier
Theatre Spring 2026
The restless idle rich gossip,
argue, flirt and entertain themselves with picnics, food and drink in a
warm Russian countryside dacha where they fish and swim in a version of
Maxim Gorky’s 1904 play Summerfolk by Nina Raine and her brother Moses
Raine at the National Theatre.
They are dissatisfied with their lives, with some of them even sensing a
change is going to come, but having little idea what that will be.
Kaleria (Doon Mackichan), who
insists 'None of us is happy,' occasionally gets up to make a weak attempt
at reciting poetry. A writer at the gathering who claims,'I don't write
from the heart, I write from the groin,' is also disappointing. One of
them observes, 'How shallow we are'.
The play’s point of view mostly comes from the women characters, with the
doctor Maria (Justine Mitchell) angrily pointing out that they are all the
children of poor, oppressed workers who they now do nothing for, and
Varvara (Sophie Rundle) railing against their wastefulness, saying, 'We
are nothing but talk.'
The servants are deliberately side-lined by the action. One of them says
of those they serve, 'They leave such a mess. Where would they be without
us?'
The overarching message that the unhappy idle rich are wasting their lives
is serious but lightly delivered with plenty of spoken and visual humour,
grabbing laughs from the audience.
When Vlass (Alex Lawther)
takes his top off in front of the older Maria, whom he has been insisting
he is in love with despite her claims to a lack of interest, she instantly
puts on her glasses to get a closer look.
The ambitious set, which swiftly changes from indoor entertainment to
outdoor picnics, along with the costumes, take us back to the first years
of the Twentieth Century, while the language they use is contemporary,
with, for instance, one character saying 'All we get to do is eat, drink
and fuck.'
The storyline is loose and more concerned about conjuring up an atmosphere
of rumbling, restless discontent than delivering any characters with depth
or exploring specific issues.
As the lights dim in the final moments of the play, two servants arrive to
the empty stage to sit at either end of the huge banqueting table. Women
quietly surround the set as if waiting for something to happen, perhaps in
a visual reference to the women rising up on International Women’s Day
1917, triggering the February Revolution.
Keith McKenna
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