UNCLE VANYA

Uncle Vanya.(Young Vic Theater, London) / (theater reviews)

Author/s: Matt Wolf

Issue: April 27, 1998

LONDON A Royal Shakespeare Co.-Young Vic co-production of the Chekhov

drama in two acts by Anton Chekhov in a version by David Lan.

Directed by Katie Mitchell. Sets and costumes, Vicki Mortimer;

lighting, Paule Constable; sound, Steff Langley; fights, Nick Hall;

music director, Richard Brown. Opened April 1, 1998. Reviewed April

11. Running time: 3 HOURS.

Astrov Linus Roache

Vanya Stephen Dillane

Yelena Anastasia Hille

Sonya Jo McInnes

Serebryakov Malcolm Sinclair

Mariya Cherry Morris

Marina Antonin Pemberton

Telegin Tom Bowles

Farmhand Orlando Seale

There's not a birch tree in sight in Vicki Mortimer's sparsely

elegant design for the new Royal Shakespeare Co.-Young Vic co-

production of "Uncle Vanya," but chances are you'll he too busy

wiping away tears to give that telling absence a second thought. If

too many evenings of Chekhov don't see the forest for the trees,

director Katie Mitchell clears away every cliche, finding instead an

unblinkered, devastating truth. This stellar production -- it's on a

par with the remarkable Louis Malle-Wallace Shawn film "Vanya on 42nd

Street" --sets a template for Chekhov as you wish he always came

across and all too rarely does: It is alive to virtually every

character's contradictions, which is to say that it is alive to life

itself, and one's only lasting regret is that the production can't

have a longer one.

Certainly, it's hard to conceive a more urgent and playable edition

than David Lan's new version, based on a literal translation by Helen

Rappaport. Anyone wanting their Chekhov languid and idle should

prepare for a jolt. In keeping with a company whose comparative youth

reanimates in every sense a potentially languorous text, Lan reminds

us that this playwright's apparently indolent people constitute so

many restless and anxious souls. The intermission is preceded with

the simple word "no," whose bluntness typifies the evening as a

whole. Small wonder that Mitchell's choice of music is no melancholic

and dreamy composition but Shostakovich and Gorecki -- jittery,

fevered sounds for a household on the cusp of collapse.

"This household is so unhappy," Yelena (Anastasia Hille) says twice,

and by evening's end, nearly everyone has echoed her in some way. A

straightforward assessment or the remarks of someone prone to the

dramatic? In this production, the two are inseparable, as if to

suggest that to stage your despair in no way minimizes the despair

itself. There's an element of the theatrical to all the estate's

inhabitants, beginning with a shambolic, bearded Vanya (Stephen

Dillane) who caps his furious assault on his gout-plagued former

brother-in-law Serebryakov (Malcolm Sinclair) with an explosively

stated (and hilarious) "bang."

The visiting doctor Astrov (Linus Roache) at one point speaks of "the

play (being) over," though he, too, can put aside tendencies to self-

aggrandizement and embrace real longing and hurt More than ever, one

witnesses a labyrinth -- the house, indeed, is characterized as a

maze -- of feeling mislaid and misunderstood, in which compassion and

cantankerousness are never far apart Why else would Sonya (Jo

McInnes) be referred to as an "orphan," when her father is there for

all to see? In this "Vanya," a," miscommunication cuts so deep that

such mistakes naturally arise: She's orphaned from the love any

daughter has a right to expect even as she falls for the love of the

doctor, Astrov, whose bedside manner is focused elsewhere.

As Sonya, McInnes begins all briskness, every bit the hard-working

country girl prepared for a day's chores. But she slows her stride as

the play continues in accordance with the shifting rhythms of a

community forever in flux. It's the central paradox of Chekhov that

inertia should seem so active, and it does so doubly here, with each

character staking a claim on our affections that alters as the next

appeal is made.

In Dillane's remarkable performance, this Vanya is no mere Nietzsche

manque; he's an angry son and desperate suitor (no wonder he quotes

Hamlet), and loving uncle, sometimes all at once. The exchanges with

his mother (Cherry Morris) have an unusual edge, rancor rising up as

quickly as tenderness later does with Sonya. But for all his talk of

entombment, the Vanya we see has enough vigor to make his fury really

matter. If Oprah were around, one can imagine him voicing an eloquent

and highly media-friendly denunciation not just of provincial Russia

but of himself. If self-knowledge is indeed a curse, he's the walking

damned.

Fellow stage-turned-film talent Roache ("The Wings of the Dove")

stakes his own fresh claim on a potentially over-familiar (at least

in Britain) part, presenting a droll suitor alert to everything --

vodka permitting -- except the one true love in his midst. For once,

Astrov's eco-friendly argument has real passion. One understands his

commitment to the cause no less fully than one sympathizes with

Yelena's more personal campaign not to be thought vain. Emending

somewhat Julianne Moore's approach in the Malle film, Hille makes an

unusually proactive Yelena; in a different context and different

time, this onetime musician might have made her own hoped-for mark

instead of being the not always unwitting agent of so much amorous

distress.

At times, Mitchell's desire for intimacy softens proceedings too

much: It's fine to feel as if one's intruding on conversation, but

not if you can't bear it. But mostly the evening reverberates with

the tug of affection and regret found in the opening scene between

Astrov and the nanny (a lovely performance from Antonia Pemberton),

whose God-filled language Sonya herself seems to have inherited by

the end. This "Uncle Vanya" is nearly an hour longer than most

stagings of this play, and yet it speeds by, taking with it an

audience sensitized to life's ongoing ache for which this fearlessly

modern play and production are any theater lover's balm.