Uncle Vanya / Ujka Vanja / 2012

Brian Friel’s version of Uncle Vanya reworks Chekhov in an Irish idiom, following Vanya and his niece Sonya as they run a country estate to support Sonya’s father, the self-important professor Serebryakov, and his restless young wife.

Mick Gordon’s production stripped the play down to a bare stage of plain white chairs, with Igor Vasiljev’s backdrops of receding, half-abstract woodland closing in act by act to mark the passing seasons — trading period clutter for a sense of empty rooms and thwarted lives.

It premiered at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast in February 2012, with Conleth Hill as Vanya alongside Ian McElhinney, Declan Conlon and Siobhán McSweeney.