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.