Enemies, Almeida, London

The moral confusion of an uprising

In The Cherry Orchard, the sound of an axe giving the chop to the landowners' old fruit trees famously anticipates the Russian Revolution. However with Maxim Gorky's Enemies, written four years later in 1907, it's not just symbolic noises off. This working-class writer, who was himself involved in an armed uprising in 1905, brings you more directly to the historic brink.

Michael Attenborough's production - using a mostly sure-footed, slightly filleted, new English version by David Hare - looks just like Chekhov at first glance. We're in a lovely glade of silver birches. The aged housekeeper is busy with the samovar. Jack Davenport's Yakov Bardin, despairingly idling in a linen suit, is already drunk whilst Amanda Drew's Tatyana, a star actress, is swanning around looking stunning in white lace.

However, Yakov's brother, Sean Chapman's Zakhar, is a landowner-turned-industrialist whose factory workers have become radically politicized. He has unwittingly employed several undercover socialist intellectuals and the labour force is now demanding better conditions. As a liberal, Zakhar has been readily conceding but his business partner, Sean Gilder's Mikhail, is an infuriated old-style manager determined to crush the growing insurrection. This incendiary situation goes into meltdown. Mikhail is shot. The army arrests all suspected troublemakers and establishes a kangeroo court, leaving the family riven by mutual recriminations and moral confusion.

Ultimately, I am not wholly persuaded Enemies is a great play. Maybe there are just too many characters with too little time. Some tantalizing narrative threads remain underdeveloped. The ending only has an air of being revelatory. That said, this is a fascinating insight into a society in upheaval. It really shows the range, complicated gradations and messiness of the Russian class system and it has continuing reverberations for our own culture. Gorky is not crudely partisan, intermeshing sympathy and satire, and Attenborough's huge ensemble, though occasionally adrift, are collectively admirable.

To 24 June, 020 7359 4404