Back in London at Wyndham's, it was worth the ticket price for the Russian-language version of Three Sisters (with surtitles) just to eavesdrop on the audience of British Russia-watchers and leggy Slavs in furs and stilettos unselfconsciously texting during the key scenes, an atrocity the mordant Dr Chekhov would have relished.

Director Andrei Konchalovsky hails from one of those pliant Russian intellectual dynasties which rub along with whoever is in charge. (His father, Sergei Mikhalkov, managed to write the words to the Soviet national anthem three times in response to differing political requirements, including Vladimir Putin's.) Better-known as a film director, Konchalovsky is keen to make Chekhov as familiar to English-speaking audiences as Shakespeare. In truth, he almost is these days, but it was rewarding to see a prime native cast having a go at the work of the finest Russian malcontent.

Konchalovsky's Three Sisters was a brittle view of life on the provinces, stripped of the girlish romanticism of more traditional productions. Vershinin (Alexander Domogarov), the unhappily married soldier dallying with Masha (Julia Vysotskaya), was portrayed as a self-obsessed fantasist, rather than a hopeless dreamer, torn between duty and desire. The sisters were hard-bitten, smoking, caviling creatures. Even the fabled longing for Moscow did not seem to be felt as more than an echo of a desire long spent.

The net result was harsher and less involving than the play deserved. The best moments were the cast's ironic reflections in front of Konchalovsky's probing camera about what it was like to play Chekhov. The answers ranged from earnest young actors telling us that he is their inspiration to a veteran member of the cast chiding the director in full irate babushka mode for his innovation — "Is this strictly necessary, Andrei?" — and refusing to play along, other than to send greetings home.

It wasn't remotely necessary, of course, but it did raise some cheer in a production which had bite and energy but lacked soul or a sense of purpose. A cluttered ending, with the characters watching footage of soldiers in the First World War, merely confused, and felt like a chilly way of saying that the gentry had Bolshevism coming to them. It may (as the Marxists used to say) be no coincidence that Konchalovsky belongs to a category nicknamed in Germany Putin-Versteher (Putin understanders), who somehow find others to blame for the Russian president's disruptive actions. Konchalovsky thinks we should calm down over Crimea and Ukraine because it is an "elaborate bluff" by a "sophisticated leader" dealing with an "unsophisticated people". If we are talking about a Chekhovian menu of fools, arrogance and unfolding tragedy, Putin does sound awfully like a prime character for the 21st-century version.