Friel's Chekhov is wonderful theatre

With a literal translation from Chekov's original, Una Ni Dhubhghaill has provided Brian Friel with words with which he has taken wonderful lilting Irish liberties, while remaining absolutely faithful to the spirit of the original Russian drama. The result, under Ben Barnes's fluid and sensitive direction, has freed a superb company of actors to turn in magical performances that enliven an already lively script with characterisations that are deeply felt and lightly played. The result is an almost perfect demonstration of the art and life of theatre and the best Uncle Vanya that this reviewer has seen or expects to see.

The Serebryakov estate is, like its inhabitants, inheritors and neighbouring farmlands and wild-life, in decline. It is inhabited by Vanya Ivan Voynitsky, the quintessence of vague goodwill and no expectations, his elderly mother Maria, an ineffectual admirer of political polemecists, his niece Sonya, a plain country girl with grit and determination to endure remorselessly unrequited love for the local doctor Mikhail Astrov, who may care more about his trees than his patients, Ilya Telegin, the nephew of the former owner of the estate whose fortunes "took a little dip", since when he has been supported by the Voynitskys, and Marina, the old nanny who is as good at ladling vodka as tea for those she reckons need either.

But they have been re-visited by the hectoring egotistical Professor Alexander Serebryakov (Sonya's father who had originally married Vanya's sister) and his icily beautiful second wife Elena, with whom both Vanya and the doctor have fallen in debilitating love while she, for ever mindful of her dull duty to her famous husband (whose fortunes have been financially sustained from the products of the estate), may fall in love with the doctor only to stick by her duty. All the normal certainties of the routine of the household have been disrupted.

Each of the players has crafted an individual characterisation of depth and originality. All of them play in ensemble with the assurance that, because of their familiarity, they make direct contact even when talking across one another. Ben Barnes has given each and all of them the perfect positions on stage at every moment to do precisely this. He has also modulated the pace and the rhythms of the mood and the language to provide maximum dramatic effect to the minutiae, the depression and the domestic turmoil.

Niall Buggy's Vanya embodies low self-esteem and vengeful anger with total mutual integrity - a major and deeply moving performance by any standards, as perfect in the smallest detail as in the overall dramatic strategy. Susannah Harker plays perfectly on the surface characteristics of Elena, yet reveals the dangerous depths of potential emotion which she will resist. Donna Dent's Sonya is plain, straightforward and heartrendingly sad and determined. John Kavanagh's Dr Astrov is impeccably ambivalent as the practical carer for both ecology and sick people and hopelessly distracted by Elena. Eamon Morissey's sweating inadequate Telegin plays as if the part had been written only for him and manages to be both hilarious and touchingly inadequate. Daphne Carroll is Marina, Ann Rowan is Vanya's belligerent mother Marina and Ciaran Reilly is the labourer and porter.

Despite David Gaucher's dull and not always functional setting (albeit superbly lit by Rupert Murray) they, their director and their several authors have combined to provide an evening of theatre filled with insight and wonder, laughter and tears, sadness and courage and ultimate catharsis: an absolute must. And the Friel script, which is part of the overall wonder, was published yesterday by the redoubtable Gallery press and is worth buying just to read.

Runs until November 21st. Booking at (01) 874 4045 and 874 6042.