Then directors of 19th-century plays bring a carriage onto the stage their boldness is worthy of remark since even a hansom is a sizeable object, tending to fill up the acting area. Dalia Ibelhauptaite, Lithuanian-born director of this 90-minute play by Gogol, places five carriages on the stage, large four-wheeled jobs with folding hoods. Barouches, I think they are; wheels painted cherry red, black bodywork and buttoned upholstery.
Much of the time they do occupy the entire acting area because Ibelhauptaite makes them work as furniture. She has the actors prancing in the carriages like acrobats, hurling cards in all directions, even into the audience, capturing the thrill of successful gambling in these fantastic explosions.
Her designer is the supremely gifted Oleg Sheintsis, whose theatre work in Moscow not only plays odd tricks with perspective but alters the perspective during the action. His black carriages, losing their outline in the surrounding darkness, are marvellous to look at and provide the perfect springboard for three-dimensional movement.
The stage-time of Gogol's play, in this clever new version by Chris Hannan, is virtually identical with real time, linking events so tightly that there is never a still moment for the hero, Ikharev (Oleg Menshikov), to pause for reflection. He arrives at a provincial inn with 80,000 roubles he has won with a deck of mysteriously marked cards and he is keen for further victories. Over-keen, because waiting at the inn, tolling in their carnages, are a curious gang of fellows who lack his expertise with cards but are sharper with their wits.
Who stings whom it is improper to reveal which puts the reviewer in a post. But the gang introduce Ikharev to art elderly person (Tim Barlow) who denounces the evil of gambling, to a dashing young fellow (Jeremy Gilley) who longs to play as recklessly as a hussar, and to a sombre official, artfully played by Anthony Milner like a Presbyterian sheep.
Similarly grotesque are the three men in the carriages, smoking pipes as long as clarinets. They could have slithered out of an illustration to Dickens - Peter Silverleaf's bland Sauerkraut, Phil Daniels's Slipper, croaking like an adult Artful Dodger, and the busiest of the bunch, Mark Rylance, as a spindle-shanked veteran by the name of Our Lady of Succour. Rylance's grainy voice hints at a world of wearying experience, concealing more than it reveals. All are role-players, animating Gogol's parable of treachery and its destruction of self-trust.
Menshikov has learnt English since he played Yesenin last year in "When She Danced". His accent and flamboyant style are in marked contrast to the grittier acting around him, suiting his role as "new boy" but over-dramatising the moralistic coda. Until then his bold physicality is a vital element in a production glittering with bold effects, where the hero's lucky card glides into view as a silent, crinolined beauty (Fuschia Peters) for Rylance to quiz through his eyeglass for tell-tale marks. Note the crescendo of champagne, arriving in glasses, in bottles, in crates. Corks pop; the music, from Schnittke's "Gogol Suite", makes cheeky play with "The Merry Widow", and then the truth, like the day, dawns. For the victim it is a cold hangover, for us a frosty comedy.

Submitted by Jane Grey