Her two breakthrough performances, which brought her to fame, were Masha in The Seagull and Sonya in Uncle Vanya, both praised for "fitting perfectly Chekhov's aesthetics."

Also lauded were her Natasha in Three Sisters; later Varya in The Cherry Orchard and Nina Zarechnaya in the renewed Seagull.

"[1] Lilina was said to have "understood perfectly the electrically charged dynamics of the Dostoyevsky prose, full of emotional overload," and was stunning as Karpukhina in The Uncle's Dream and as Khromonozhka (Limping Girl) in Nikolai Stavrogin (based upon Demons), according to Inna Solovyova.

Her other notable roles included Tatyana in Dmitry Merezhkovsky's Joy Will Come, The Guest (The Life of Man by Leonid Andreyev) and Anna Andreyevna in The Government Inspector (1921).

[2] After MAT's 1923-1924 foreign tour Lilina's domestic obligations started to prevail, her contribution to the theatre became limited.