The stage is set at the opening by an immense full-length portrait of the father, former master of the estate, dominating the stage before a distant view of the mansion. Brooding and in military garb, it is no surprise to find that he was a brutish bully who drove his wife to despair and adultery. A mid-19th-Century society portrait in the style of Ge or Kramskoi, the gravity of the image is disrupted by a full size wardrobe set off-centre into the portrait at the level of the master’s legs. It is from the top shelf of this linen cupboard that we see descend Kuzovkin, ‘an impoverished gentleman’ who, mysteriously, has lived in the mansion for thirty years, watching the growth into womanhood of the young Olga.

The return of Olga from St Petersburg, as bride of the coldly correct Pavel Nikolaitch, a government official, precipitates a crisis in the household of the sort with which readers of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons will be familiar. At a drunken welcome-home party for the new master, Kozovin is taunted as the old master’s fool, and goaded into releasing the dramatic news that Olga is in fact his own daughter, begotten while he was comforting the abused and abandoned mistress of the estate.

In the denouement, which sees the hapless Kozovin banished from the estate after a distraught final meeting with his daughter (echoes of Lear and Cordelia in a minor key), Olga’s ‘father’ and mother once again preside over the scene, their portraits across from one another as the sorry tale unfolds. Before each is set a small icon. The mother is in a softer style, an early Repin perhaps, with a melancholy that seems to set her as the Madonna of the estate. Her icon is tended and glows, Olga’s old nanny genuflects before it. The old master’s icon is unlit.

Fortune's Fool is on show at the Old Vic until 22 February 2014. Book tickets here.