A stonkingly good performance by Neil Pearson (pictured) as the affable, good-sort Dr Astrov is the most compelling feature of English Touring Theatre's new production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. The play opened in Milton Keynes too late, alas, to be reviewed in last week's Oxford Times. This week, it is completing its run in Malvern. Head there, in the two days of the tour that remain, to see some of the finest acting it has been my privilege to witness.

The boozy, life-loving Astrov is the character that comes closest in this play to expressing its author's views. Those concerning ecology, about the despoliation of the countryside in the name of progress, have a curiously modern ring to them.

His ideas are expounded most eloquently in the great Act III speech concerning the changing landscape made to the icy Yelena (Michelle Dockery) with whom, like Vanya, he is in love. Pearson - under the direction of Sir Peter Hall -has transformed this into a passionate rant, during which I found myself thinking: "He deserves a round of applause for this." Others clearly thought the same, for an ovation is precisely what he got - the first time I can recall such a thing during the performance of a straight play.

Other splendid performances were offered in this tragicomic drama of wasted opportunities and unrequited longings. There can surely not have been a dry eye in the house, for instance, at the end of the affecting closing speech from Astrov's unappealing admirer Sonya (Loo Brealey), so similar in content and style to Olga's life-affirming statement that rounds off Three Sisters. This had as much to do here, I think, with Stephen Mulrine's admirable new translation as with Ms Brealey's sensitive and well-modulated delivery.

Mark Extance made an excellent job in the title role, having been promoted from the lowest level of the cast (the estate workman) to replace the injured Nicholas Le Provost. He really needs to polish up his vowels, though; at times his "heow neow breown ceow" tones were reminiscent of those of the late Grocer Heath.