For reasons I explain on Page 6, I was thinking about Three Sisters on Monday night in Newbury, during the play Brontë. I was thinking about Chekhov’s ‘drama’ again the following night at the Oxford Playhouse during The Glass Menagerie (another production that benefits from the magic touch of Shared Experience). This was because in this same theatre 30 years ago, I saw the lovely Imogen Stubbs, who stars in the Tennessee Williams classic, give a startlingly good performance as the youngest of the sisters, Irina.

Seven years ago, the novelist, biographer and journalist A.N. Wilson – perhaps on this occasion going a little over the top – wrote in the Daily Telegraph: “The best production [of Three Sisters] I ever saw passed into legend even as it was being performed by Oxford students – with the brilliant Stephen Pickles directing and Imogen Stubbs demonstrating her star qualities from the moment she opened her mouth.

“All subsequent productions are judged in my mind beside it. True, the chemistry worked, as it so magically can in the theatre. But this great ‘amateur’ production had one advantage over all the professional Three Sisters one is likely to see: Irina really was only 20 when the curtain first went up.”

Strangely, in the course of a very long review, The Oxford Times’s Frank Dibb made no mention at all of the student star. Most of the space was occupied by his chuntering about the inaudibility of the performers. But since he specifically condemned the Olga and Masha in this respect, it might be assumed that Ms Stubbs passed muster.

Inaudibility was a problem for Frank as he grew older. Things were hardly helped by his insistence on sitting far from the action in the front row of the circle.