I have little space to impress upon you the sheer wonder of this show from the Maly Theatre of St Petersburg, first seen on these shores in 1999.
So let it be said outright that this version of Chekhov's early, problematic play is total theatre: visually daring, perpetually novel and superlatively acted. Compromise yourself to attend.
Beside a sparkling river, the story of irresistibly inconstant schoolmaster Platonov and his lovers unfolds.
The extant script is seven hours long. Maly director Lev Dodin's shortened adaptation seems like a rough, heady concentrate of all that is Chekhovian.
There's landed idleness, moral equivocation, the rise of the middle classes, but dealt with in youthful, Technicolor drama, all the more energetic as breathtaking theatrical coups come with the frequency of unwanted buses.
Time seems arbitrary as Sergey Kuryshev's massive, charismatic hero swims from encounter to amorous encounter.
The background is never still, as partying minor characters dive headlong into the river or tootle jazz instruments and dance with blind decadence that recalls La Règle du Jeu.
Front stage, we witness romantic interplays of high emotional subtlety from an author of profound insight, and, from Platonov's women, performances of such fully realised personality that English surtitles seem otiose. Three and a half hours of Russian zip by.
Until 18 March (020 7638 8891).
Platonov
Barbican Theatre
Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
