Brian Friel's new work, Afterplay, is set a decade or so after the conclusion of two of Russian dramatist Chekhov's masterpieces, Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters. At the Gielgud Theatre, it is superbly acted by John Hurt and Penelope Wilton.

Sonya, neice of titular Uncle Vanya, is sorting through bank paperwork in a run-down café in Moscow. She is joined by the shabby-looking Andrey, brother of the Three Sisters, for a full and frank sharing of their personal lives, and a very hearty shring of a bottle of vodka.

We learn that both characters have been abandoned since the end of Chekhov's plays - Vanya has died, leaving Sonya a lonely and aging spinster; Andrey's wife has left him and one of his beloved sisters has committed suicide.

You might start to think this is a bleak piece, and in some respects you'd be right. But there is also a lot of humour here, particularly in Andrey's repeated confessions of his "little fables", all of which he tells Sonya in an attempt to impress her. (He is not, for example, playing at the Opera House, but rather is making ends meet by busking.)

As the characters grow fonder of one another, and as the vodka starts to take effect, Hurt's hangdog expression is transformed with twinkle-eyed chuckling. Wilton's brittle and frosty Sonya too, shows a frisky and whimsical side.

But the keynote of the play is hope, and the question of how to carry on when hope seems to have deserted you. Friel's Sonya says that it is fortitude, "that Cardinal virtue", which one needs to get through a life seemingly without hope. The play is certainly moving in its handling of these two characters who do not at first glance appear to have much to hope for.

If the rather highbrow scenario, following on from the plays of Chekhov, strikes anyone as too rarified a pleasure, relax - it isn't necessary to have an in-depth knowledge of Uncle Vanya and
Three Sisters before you enter the theatre, it all makes sense without that back story, all is explained.

It is the acting which makes this play, surely, one of the productions of the year. The chance to see a master like Hurt on the stage should not be passed up lightly.