A touch of frost

Despite the sterling performances, Sam Mendes's Uncle Vanya leaves Rhoda Koenig feeling cheated

Like all Chekhov's plays, Uncle Vanya has heaps of charm and comedy, but, unlike the others, its ending is brutally grim. More than once I've gone in to Uncle Vanya feeling fine and come out worrying about being sectioned. Sam Mendes, whose first production for the West End was an unusually buoyant Cherry Orchard, has given us, instead of the usual stiff slug of vodka, a champagne sorbet – delicate, dry, and only faintly depressing. Emotionally I'm grateful, but aesthetically I feel a bit cheated.

Instead of the typical Russian country-house clutter, Anthony Ward's set is simply a dark, narrow table that spans the stage, an upright piano in a corner, and a fringe of severely trimmed grasses. The table sometimes divides the characters like a wall, but it's immediately obvious that everyone in this household is at odds not only with the others but with their own natures. Dr Astrov berates himself: "Dr Asinine! Dr Atrophied!" (Brian Friel's new translation is fresh and bracing, with lots of sharply comic lines, but an occasional present-day word – "stuff" for possessions, "judgmental" – leaps out at us.) The chatelaine, Yelena, drags herself in as if, despite her white lace-trimmed hat and trailing white gown, she is in a funeral cortège. She picks up a glass of tea, clinks a spoon in it with sardonic emphasis, then leaves without giving anyone a glance or a word. Her elderly husband, Serebryakov, sums up the mood: "I dreamt that my left leg no longer belonged to me but I could still feel pain in it."

The acting is superb, despite some of the actors' inherent limitations. I doubt anyone would agree with Emily Watson's description of herself, in the role of Serebryakov's daughter, Sonya, as "plain," and her manner lacks the clumsiness and desperation of a truly unattractive and isolated woman. But in the final speech of the play her blonde beauty and fervour make her longing for transcendence exalting and moving. Simon Russell Beale seems too plump, too cuddly, and too clean to convince us of Vanya's masochistic bitterness and the frustration cruelly highlighted by his passion for Yelena. Mark Strong as Astrov is, by contrast, very lean and hard for a man given, as the doctor is, to despair and drink, and his accent, which is coarser than that of the others, makes him sound socially beneath them. He has, however, Astrov's intensity, though here it suggests that what draws him to Yelena is merely an attempt to stave off self-disgust.

Helen McCrory as Yelena handles the part's difficult balance of sensual self-absorption, dutifulness and fear with great assurance. In a breathtaking scene she strolls around the table, murmuring to herself, her voice making little dives and dips as she toys with the idea of falling in love with Astrov.

A film of frost, though, seems to touch everyone, with the result that Vanya's murderous outburst seems unbelievable, and Sonya's anguish at facing a life of lonely spinsterhood seems bearable. Part of this is Mendes's lightness, part Friel's writing, which favours understatement over agony. The hanger-on Telegin (played with beautifully gentle bewilderment by Anthony O'Donnell) is, instead of a victim of misplaced honour, simply a fool. But Friel magisterially restores the balance when poor Telegin says the villagers laugh at him for taking handouts. Never mind, says wise Nanny: "We all depend on handouts from God."

Donmar Warehouse, London WC1, to 20 Nov (020-7369 1732)