From left, Gala Gordon as Irina,Â Mariah Gale as Olga and Vanessa Kirby as Masha in theÂ Young Vicâs production of ââThree Sistersââ by Anton Chekhov, running through Oct. 13.  LONDON — For much of the new Young Vic production of “Three Sisters,” the second of two productions from major Australian directors to open in London in a single week, it felt like I was watching an overweening concept as opposed to Chekhov’s actual play. That’s at least until the set calms down (or, in this case, is actually dismantled) and the actors are given a chance to breathe.  Breaking news about the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia and more.  A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics.  Rupert Everett, left, as Oscar Wilde and Freddie Fox as BosieÂ in "The Judas Kiss'' at the Hampstead Theatre through Oct. 13.  The result, in Benedict Andrews’s staging, still means one spends a lot of time staring at the bleak vista of the raised adjoining tables that make up Johannes Schütz’s design. The pervading glumness is dominated at the rear of the stage by a mountain of earth from which one keeps expecting the cheerily entombed Winnie from Beckett’s “Happy Days” to burst forth.  Those tables, meanwhile, tally all too vividly with the “tedious gray town” that is the provincial Russian backwater where the play is set. In context, it’s perhaps best not to ask how stagehands dressed in contemporary military fatigues are folded into a narrative whose grievous climax involves a duel. This doesn’t quite seem a pistols-at-dawn kind of crowd.  The link between Chekhov and Beckett has long been evident, particularly in a play in which the ever-elusive Moscow of the three Prozorov sisters’ yearning functions as an equivalent Godot. And I am more than happy with productions of the classics that give the material a good shake, as was managed to astonishing effect over the summer with a revisionist staging of “A Doll’s House” that remains a highlight of the theater year to date.  As directed by Mr. Andrews, whose division of labor between Sydney and Berlin is evident from his Continental aesthetic, the ragged, rampaging emotions of Chekhov’s play take some time to emerge, and one feels throughout the first half that a predominantly young cast are too busy negotiating the eccentric set to engage fully with the text. (Its post-intermission disassemby, too, is remarkably tedious: Rather like watching a large jigsaw puzzle unpicked one piece at a time.)  The more seasoned actors have greater technique to draw upon, though that’s not necessarily a good thing. Michael Feast, for instance, is disconcertingly hammy as the drunken doctor, Chebutykin, who at one point sends crockery flying into the audience in accordance with a conceit that wants to smash all preconceptions of this play. One thinks here of Cate Blanchett, who visited London in April in Mr. Andrews’s sellout staging of the German play “Gross und Klein” (Big and Small) and managed to be both manic and unmoving at the same time.  But come Chekhov’s devastating fourth act (this production is played, as is customary, in two halves), the cast seems to snap into the surpassing dislocation and loss laid bare by a play in which the sisters are revealed to have only one another. Again, one thinks of Didi and Gogo’s co-dependence in “Waiting for Godot.”  A vampy Masha earlier on, Vanessa Kirby acquires a feral quality that amplifies this lovesick sister’s abject state, just as Gala Gordon, playing the youngest daughter, Irina, communicates a shining-faced enthusiasm in the fearful process of shutting down. Her well-meaning husband, the Latin-spouting academic Kulygin, emerges in Adrian Schiller’s canny portrayal as a husband-as-fool matched in dramatic literature only by Tesman in “Hedda Gabler,” to cite another canonical play now being revived in London.  And the good performances get better, chief among them Danny Kirrane (late of “Jerusalem”) as the sisters’ beloved if brow-beaten brother, who is seen wandering the wasteland that the playing area becomes. On the defensive earlier on, Mr. Kirrane's Andrey woundingly suggests a man no longer capable of defending his harridan of a wife, Natasha (a tattooed Emily Barclay), and who is seen wheeling their baby disconsolately to and fro like an overgrown child himself.
'Three Sisters' eliminates the basics with mixed results, while 'The Judas Kiss' tries it again after failing 14 years ago.