When he held a press performance in the then half-finished Rose Theatre, Peter Hall voiced the hope that it would be fully in operation within a year. That was in December 2004. Last week saw its first proper opening night. Hall has already announced that he will not be running the Rose in full bloom; his successor is to be Stephen Unwin, the outgoing supremo of English Touring Theatre, for which company Hall in turn has directed this production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya .

The theatre itself fulfils every promise Hall made when showing us its shell three years ago. A modern indoor version of the design of the Elizabethan Rose Theatre, it has aspects in common with Shakespeare's Globe: a stage thrust into banks of seating surrounding it on three levels, with a pit for "groundlings" . . . though here, unlike at Bankside, the groundlings sit (£7 each, bring your own cushion).