Declan Donnellan and his acclaimed Cheek by Jowl Russian company are back, with their version of Pushkin’s 1825 blank-verse drama. The modern-dress production, here performed in Russian with surtitles, displays all of Donnellan’s clarity and flair. Gesture and imagery are economical and eloquent and there’s a forceful fluidity to scenes that, played on a narrow traverse stage, rush into one another as if the tide of events was unstoppable.

Strikingly reminiscent of Macbeth, it’s part-political thriller, part-historical chronicle, imbued with incense and ritual and dripping with the blood of children. What’s missing is a sense of visceral connection to the action.

Set during Russia’s Time of the Troubles, Pushkin’s play is concerned with the dubious accession of Boris Godunov and the attempt by a renegade monk, Grigori Otrepyev, to unseat him. Boris becomes Tsar following the murder of Dmitry, the seven-year-old son of Ivan the Terrible, a crime of which Pushkin, unlike many historians, finds Godunov guilty.

Grigori claims, with shameless duplicity, that he is the grown-up Dmitry, come to claim his birthright. As Godunov (Alexander Feklistov) wrestles with his conscience and struggles to maintain his position, the impostor raises Polish support and embarks on a remorseless campaign of usurpation.

Donnellan crowds the stage with vivid imagery. Noblemen jostle for position, the poor and the desperate line the routes of the powerful, ready to change allegiance at the first breath of a promise to improve their lot. Priests process and chant, while there’s torture and interrogation in Grigori’s military camp. There’s the ghostly figure of the slaughtered Dmitry, barefoot in his nightshirt, and there is Godunov’s own son Feodor, also doomed to violent death.

The production’s best scene illustrates the allure of power through lust of a more carnal kind. Wooing the Polish noble’s daughter Marina Mnishek next to a fountain, Andrey Kuzichev’s intense Grigori reveals his deception to her. Her ardour drains away – only to be revived, in a splashing, ecstatic embrace, when she realises the ruthlessness of his ambition.

It’s a rare moment of potent emotional immediacy. That scarcity means that, for a British viewer, the true dramatic significance of Pushkin’s work remains elusive. But with this rich, textural staging Donnellan brings it closer to us.

To Sat 17 May 2008. Box-office: 0845 1207550

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