Ward No 6

Anton Chekhov's story is about a provincial doctor so depressed by the conditions in the hospital where he works and by his own nihilistic fatalism that he ultimately ends up a patient in the insane ward.

In translating it to the stage, adapter-director Matthew Parker has inevitably reduced the philosophical debates that take up much of the original to a few sample exchanges, but emphasises and intensifies the central irony by having the doctor's story acted out by the mental patients in a kind of small-scale Marat/Sade style.

The four young actors of the DogOrange company, all recent graduates of Drama Studio London, thus take on the challenge of playing mental patients playing the characters in the doctor's story, while also communicating that the story they are telling is their skewed perception of reality.

The result is a dream-like tale in which the doctor is from the start the passive and doomed victim of outside forces, much like the inmates themselves.

Parker's direction and design sustain the double vision as well as the clarity of the story and some hints of the philosophical content, as does the excellent ensemble playing of Harry Lobek, Michael Linsey, Ben Galpin and Charlotte Blake.