Bewleys Cafe Theatre, Dublin

Most productions in Bewley’s Cafe Theatre seek to shut out the bustling world beyond its windows – no easy feat for a venue overlooking Grafton Street. But in Anu theatre company’s stately adaptation of a short story by Anton Chekhov, Caitríona Ní Mhurchú throws open the curtains and lets the light pour in. It’s a brave gambit from director Sophie Motley, threatening to break the spell but intriguingly serving to thicken it instead.

Chekhov’s story foregrounds the sharp discrepancy between private and public behaviour. On the surface, Olga Mihalovna is celebrating her husband’s name-day, entertaining guests with ceaseless chatter. “When you are entertaining, it is far easier to talk than to listen,” she tells us; a rule of monologues too, perhaps. But Olga’s mind is roiling with shame, fury and betrayal. She is concealing her pregnancy from the guests, while her husband withholds his thoughts from her, confiding in another.

Chekhov uses third-person narration to encompass both the display of society and the secrets of the individual, while by transplanting their adaptation almost wholesale into Olga’s voice, Ní Mhurchú and Motley initially seem to render it into unsubtle confessional. The performance offers more tantalising equivalents though: the din of Dublin complements chattering Russian society, while designer Sarah Jane Shiels absorbs the decor of Bewley’s into her set, and Ní Mhurchú (as Olga), wearing a tight, apologetic smile, walks around the room as if she owns the place.

“Why do I smile and lie?” she wonders, often regarding us like guests. But the performer Ní Mhurchú is herself radiantly pregnant, further playing with presentation and reality. With unshowy confidence, agile wit and a delicate performance, this clever production asks our worlds to merge. Deceptions and truths, society and performance, are all invited to the party and made to mingle. Until Feb 20