Sipping a restorative glass of stout after a long and arduous day in the rehearsal room, Susannah Harker admits that working on the Gate Theatre's new production of Uncle Vanya is a draining experience; but also, she insists, an exhilarating one. "I'm hugely enjoying it, and enjoying working with such a good team of people."
This is the first appearance on an Irish stage for the fair-haired English actress, and the first time she has spent in Dublin. Her only previous experience of working in Ireland was more than 10 years ago in Sligo, on the television mini-series of J.G. Farrell's novel Troubles, which Michael Colgan co-produced. "I was back again a couple of years later with my husband (the actor Iain Glen), who was in Pat O'Connor's film Fools of Fortune."
It was Colgan who persuaded her at the beginning of this year to play Elena in the Gate's production of Uncle Vanya, which marks the 70th anniversary of the theatre's first production, Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, in October 1928. "Michael had been telling me for a long time that I should play Elena in Dublin, and it finally came together this year. I was reluctant to make the commitment so far in advance, but it's a part I've always wanted to play. And then Brian Friel agreed to do this version, which is just a wonderful bonus." Friel's version, she feels, is a particularly humane, sympathetic interpretation of Chekhov's text. "People often don't realise the comedy that exists in something like Uncle Vanya, which comes through more clearly in this version, and there's a real musicality to the language."
The role of Elena, the beautiful second wife of Vanya's brother-in-law (played in this production by T.P. McKenna), whose arrival to a small, decaying Russian estate helps precipitate conflicts and confrontation, is, she feels, often reduced to a cipher or enigma in productions of the play. "I've seen several productions of Uncle Vanya, some good, some not so good. There are no easy answers in Chekhov. The characters' confusion, their regrets, their inability to take action, are recognisable to all of us, I think."
One of the things that attracted her to the play, she says, is her own Russophilia. She has always felt at home in Russia, she says, and people used to take her for a native there (it's easy to see why - there's something quite Russian about her features and complexion). "I've spent some time there, and I absolutely love it. I don't want to seem like I'm sentimentalising it, but from my experience so far, I do think there's a similarity between the Russians and the Irish in the way they think about life and about art."
Harker's impressive list of theatre credits includes work with theatre directors such as Nicholas Hytner and Richard Eyre, and she has worked with film directors including James Ivory (on Surviving Picasso), but most people on this side of the Irish Sea will know her best from her television work, particularly her portrayal of journalist Mattie Storin in Andrew Davis's satirical political thriller House of Cards, which earned her a BAFTA nomination, and her role as Jane Bennet in the BBC's hugely popular Pride and Preju- dice. She can currently be seen in Ultraviolet, Channel 4's hip and stylish new series updating the vampire myth for the X-Files generation, in which she plays Angie, an independent-minded single mother on the trail of the ruthless undead who are infiltrating society. At the time we met, only two episodes had been shown so far, but she urged me to stick with it. "There's a certain amount of scene-setting to be got out of the way in the first two, but it gets really good then. Joe Ahearne, the writer-director, is amazingly talented. He only started doing television drama in the last couple of years (Ahearne was one of the directors on This Life), but he has a fantastic imagination. I think it's a unique series, with its own very strong style, and very believable."
Indeed, Ultraviolet is a thoroughly modern take on vampirism - there are no stakes through the heart and the vampire hunters use wooden bullets and garlic gas to hunt down their prey - but there's a family connection with Dracula (and by extension with Dublin). Her great-grandfather was Bram Stoker's best friend, and his name lives on in the character of Jonathan Harker in Stoker's novel.
In his programme note for the Gate's production, Chekov's biographer Donald Rayfield remarks that the "refusal to show `the path to heaven' is what most irritated Chekov's contemporaries in Russia (and) what makes him so loved and respected, after his death, in other countries". Harker agrees that the universality and modernity of a play such as Uncle Vanya is what makes it as fascinating a work in the 1990s as the 1890s.
"Chekhov speaks so clearly to us about the human condition that it sometimes comes as a shock to realise he was writing 100 years ago." With a cast that includes John Kavanagh, Niall Buggy and Donna Dent, she is intent on unravelling the intricacies of the play, under the direction of Ben Barnes, who she describes as "a fine director, very unobtrusive".
"There are some directors who stamp themselves very loudly on a play, but Ben doesn't do that at all. He steps back and allows you the space to explore the character, which is very much the way I like it." At this stage, having had two sips of her Guinness, she confesses to feeling a little light-headed - "That's about my limit, I'm afraid," - and tired. "Of course it's tiring, and I am tired, but this journey of discovery is what my job is all about, and it's wonderful."
Uncle Vanya, in a new version by Brian Friel, opens at the Gate Theatre on Tuesday