This is not, as the programme claims, the British premiere of Gogol's little comic masterpiece of 1836, but it's welcome all the same. The young Lithuanian director Dalia Ibelhauptaite stages it in a space surrounded by five uncoupled carriages: this is a world where everyone is stuck and yet on the move, both victims and hunters, both trapped and on the run. These cardsharpers are half-dead soul, preying on each other: as Comrade Trotsky later put it in a different context, it's a question of who, whom. This is a psychological horror story and a surrealistic dream. Cards spring from top hats; the characters seem to haunt one another. Schnittke's music (from his Gogol Suite) is alternately spiky and lush. Oleg Menshikov and Mark Rylance stylishly lead a stylish cast. The direction is elegant, fluent: a dark ballet.

Submitted by Jane Grey