When I twigged - shortly after taking my seat - that Philistines was a pre-Revolution Russian drama, my heart sank faster than the mercury in a Moscow thermometer. In un-eager anticipation I braced myself for three hours of cabbage soup, greatcoats and indistinguishable patronyms ending in -ich. But Gorky's Philistines is excellent. And with tickets starting at a mere £10, I recommend you consider mugging the nearest serf for the readies - it'll be well worth the three to six months in jail.

This is a play about life. OK - they all are. But Philistines actually debates it loud and clear: "the full gamut of the human experience, from the ridiculous to the utterly pointless". The family of Vassilly Bessemenov finds itself caught in the cross-fire of social and political upheaval. Battles rage between old and young, conservative and radical, realist and idealist, pragmatic and romantic. Everyone is striving for betterment, but no two members of the household can agree on what should be bettered, or how.

An expertly-chosen cast make easy magic with Andrew Upton's rather difficult version of Gorky's text. The paterfamilias (Phil Davis, pictured right) is a thundering old cantanker of a man, whose foundations have been disturbed by the shifting sands of his era. Vassilly's proprietorial outlook and anti-intellectual snobbery - "You've confused thinking with understanding" - bring him into perpetual conflict with his better-educated children, of whom he seems to be simultaneously envious and embarrassed.

The progeny, for their part, attempt to negotiate the boundary between parental loving protection and suffocating control. The appallingly self-indulgent Tanya (Ruth Wilson) is almost too easy to despise on account of her whiny listlessness. She gets nothing from life, and doesn't really seem to deserve much more. The former Oxford student 'star' Rory Kinnear - now well on the way to becoming a very big name on the professional stage - is excellent as the beleaguered student Pyotr, for whom youth consists of "standing between 'I want' and 'I should', being gradually torn to pieces". Luckily he has more grit than his sister - and the solace of their happy-go-lucky lodger (Justine Mitchell).

Conleth Hill is central to the comic element of the play, as the self-destructing intellectual Teterev. Albeit through very gritted teeth (Gorky - a pseudonym - means bitter'), there are plenty of laughs here. At the performance I saw, the audience seemed constantly surprised and delighted by the dark one-liners thrown out (by contrast, after a couple of Vassilly's starkly anti-Semitic outbursts, you could hear the tide turning in the Thames).

Philistines is a masterpiece, and even the dreamy presence of Cate Blanchett in the seat behind me didn't distract me from a minute of it Sorry, Cate: next time?. But as old Vassilly rightly expostulates: "If every lad of 20 thought he knew best then everything would be arse-about." So don't take my word for it; go and see for yourself.

Philistines can be seen in the NT's Lyttelton Theatre until August 18. Box office tel: 020 7452 3000 (www.nationaltheatre.org.uk)