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.