‘I only read the play after I said yes,’ he quipped. ‘And then I thought, fucking hell, what have I got myself into? Six hours long, are you serious? The audience will riot. But honestly,’ he told them, ‘I was really struck by this portrait of provincial Russians caught between the past and the future. A glorious past, an uncertain future. Each as inaccessible, as remote, as the other.’

At a certain point, they all had to meet with the wardrobe manager, who put them in dresses and toyed thoughtfully with their hair. ‘The mum bob,’ Genevieve said, scrunching her hair self-consciously. This was the first time Holly had heard her say anything about having a child, and she must have allowed her surprise to show.

‘I know, I know,’ said Genevieve. ‘I’ve kept it quiet. Partly it’s privacy, like what right do I have to plaster my daughter’s face all over the internet before she’s old enough to tell me to eff off?’

Holly knew she was supposed to ask the baby’s age, ask to see pictures. ‘And what’s the other reason?’

‘What?’

‘You said partly.’

‘Oh, did I?’ Genevieve was saved from answering by the wardrobe manager.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘We want this production to look modern.’

Genevieve smiled winningly. ‘Do whatever you need to do.’ Radiating trust and commitment to the cause, she made it sound like she was willing to let him hack off all her limbs. Then it was Holly’s turn to be scrutinised, with much sighing and tutting over her measurements and hair. The wardrobe manager informed her that her rib cage was very broad, too broad for standard sizing, then he remarked on her dry ends. ‘Try a moisturising mask.’

As rehearsals continued into the second week, the play itself remained a puzzle to Holly. Was it really all about Platonov? At the outset, the other characters – his friends – seemed to think that he was somehow the best of them, as an intellectual, modern man, but this was baffling to Holly. ‘He’s not that great a guy,’ she said during one discussion. During the course of the play, she pointed out, Platonov managed to hit on both Sofya and another woman at the party, rebuff Anna’s offers of love, ignore his long-suffering wife, persuade Sofya to run off with him to Paris, and then decide he couldn’t be arsed going after all. Finally, he threatened to shoot himself and didn’t go through with that either. ‘He’s really an antihero,’ Holly said. ‘He’s too ineffectual to do anything.’

Rhys had a different interpretation. He said the play was a study of a sex pest, a drama before its time. ‘It’s amazing,’ he said. ‘The way Chekhov gets it.’

Miles wanted the play to be a comment on a lost generation. ‘Much like ours, really.’

‘Erm, what is our generation?’ asked Rhys.