A natural approach to Chekhov

Joanna Lumley bears a distinct resemblance to the delectable Mrs Algernon Stitch in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, who, while still in bed of a morning, supervises the painting of a mural, fills in the crossword, offers useful advice on matters of state, attends to pressing correspondence, corrects a child’s construing of Horace and deals with a friend’s emotional and financial problems, before bowling merrily into the London traffic in ‘the latest model of mass-produced baby car, painted an invariable brilliant black’. Her modern-day equivalent tends not to run her life from bed but is capable of juggling quite as many and as varied tasks simultaneously, from filming and producing to writing and working unshowily for key charitable causes. In addition to which, at the moment, she is busy rehearsing for her forthcoming performances as Madame Ranevskaya in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at the Sheffield Crucible.

The rehearsal room in which we meet still carries the fading echoes of the day’s work. Director Jonathan Miller has left a crumpled and empty cigarette packet behind him, there is a pile of battered old leather suitcases in one corner, a heap of heavy calico practice skirts in another, fake bottles of champagne in a basket, a worn straw hat with black ribbons and a couple of copiously annotated scripts on a chair.

The translation being used for this production is by the playwright Pam Gems, who has given permission for any changes to be made that are considered necessary. Does Lumley prefer to start with the text fully memorised? ‘I asked Jonathan about that when we first talked about the play and he said, “I don’t really want people to know it completely at the beginning because I like to mess about with the text as we work.” My heart lifted because that’s what I really love; working at the text until you feel as if the words are your own.