“There isn’t such a thing as character: when we do the show, we try to respond to what the other people on stage are doing.”

So says Romola Garai, one of our leading young actors (Atonement, Emma), talking about her role as Masha, the middle sister of Chekhov’s three.

This might seem a rather basic approach to the art of acting, but she and Poppy Miller (who plays Olga) strongly believe in the concept of the theatre collective.

“Quite a surprising thing about the production,” Miller follows up, “is that we’re not trying each individually to give our brand new reading of these well-worn characters.

“That said, we do try to start the play off very optimistically, which is not what people expect from Chekhov. We are very much treating the first act as a party.”

So bang goes the standard view of The Three Sisters pining away in the Russian sticks for the exuberance of Moscow and the want of love. Chekhov believed his plays to be tragicomedies, making fun of the Russian upper classes, but there is a dark side.

“Oh yes,” Garai said, “there’s that famous divide between Chekhov’s perception of his plays and the way in which they have subsequently been interpreted.

“It’s been hard for directors and actors through the ages to see them as anything other than tragedies; but his great skill lies in the paradox of his writing — something very funny, quickly followed by something very sad — only by allowing those extremes to come out do you get the pathos of the play.”

This production is spare: Romola describes “a working set, like a rehearsal room, very much the theatre as the acting space and the living space and the world of the play— if that makes sense!”

It does, if theatregoers like it that way.

She is firmly in favour of experimentation. Why?

“If you love a piece of work, then the best way you can love it is by constantly challenging it. And if a piece of work is a great piece of work, it will survive endless challenge.”

I started mentioning one reviewer of this production who had expressed surprise at a servant appearing in a motorcycle courier’s helmet.

Poppy Miller interpolated: “I don’t want you to get the impression that we’re being gimmicky. The way the company, Filter, works is that it’s very much an actor-led process, so during the rehearsals, we took moments from the play in groups and having fun, and the actor you’re referring to does actually come in to work on a motorbike.

“And we played with the idea of the character’s deafness in the play being something to do with a helmet; so he’s not dressed as a courier, he’s holding on to that idea as a design choice.”

So that’s sorted out, then.

Poppy is probably best known for playing DI Carol Browning in ITV’s crime drama The Commander. She’s also previously appeared in a Filter production of Twelfth Night and appeared with Romola Garai in Emma.

I wondered whether, even in the clearly rigorous form of a theatre collective, it’s easier to perform with someone you’ve already acted with? “We’d actually worked together before, some ten years ago, but we hadn’t seen much of each other, and in Emma Romola was in almost every day, but I was literally only there for 12 days.

“It is nice to pick up with someone with unstated familiarity.

“But now we feel like a new company, so whatever relationships were there before, it’s now about this work.”

And how is it for Romola to go back to the theatre after her film and TV successes?

A very firm reply: “I always find that attitude a bit patronising. You know, I need it. It’s not like I’m doing this as a favour, I need it for my sanity, to be creatively rewarded. It’s a fantastic honour to be part of a company like this.”

This promises to be a most interesting production.

lThe Three Sisters is at the Oxford Playhouse from March 9 to March 13.