Chekhov in Hell cast - Jason Whyte, Heather O'Carroll, Nick Dunbar, Victoria Abbott, Simon LearyAnt­on Chek­hov wakes up in Lon­don after being in a coma for 100 years.  He explores Lon­don – going places,  meet­ing people.  Jason Whyte, as Chek­hov, does­n’t get to say much. How­ever, he is the centre of the play, with the oth­er char­ac­ters using him as a mir­ror to reflect them­selves. Dir­ect­or Elean­or Bish­op keeps the play racing along. Four act­ors (Vic­tor­ia Abbott, Nick Dun­bar, Simon Leary, Heath­er O’Car­roll) take on mul­tiple roles in mul­tiple set­tings. They rarely change cos­tume, and there aren’t that many props.  There is some excel­lent char­ac­ter work mani­fes­ted in phys­ic­al­ity and speech pat­terns.  These char­ac­ters are over-the-top so it comes as a sur­prise  when some of them reveal they have a (broken) heart. Par­tic­u­lar affect­ing were a TV pro­du­cer (Jes­sica, played by Abbott) and a rap­per (Mar­cia, played by O’Car­roll.) Dun­bar gets to have fun with a fash­ion design­er, and a sad woman at a speed dat­ing event. Leary is calm and col­lec­ted as a coun­sel­lor, then slightly unhinged as a chef.

The set  by Alice Hill is simple, allow­ing the AV, by Andrew Simpson, and the light­ing, by Mar­cus McShane to show up. Occa­sion­ally the pro­jec­tions were a bit dis­tract­ing because they were so inter­est­ing. Listen out for scene titles in sound design­er Gareth Hobbs’ soundtrack.