At age 47 Uncle Vanya is going through a midlife crisis, rueful and bitter that there is nothing left of his spark and rigour. He lives with his extended family on a rural estate in Russia, in a house once owned by his sister.
Anton Chekhov’s classic text takes us on a journey through the prosaic to examine friendships, jealously and animosity in an environment bereft of meaning and motivation, where the working class clash with academic pompousness.
Act 1 introduces us to the scene of eight characters sharing a household in various attitudes of apathy and lassitude, sparking the tinder for Act 2 when simmering tensions and unrequited passions bubble to the surface. The V-shaped tiered seating (V for Vanya?) affords a window view of the interior with a mezzanine level, creating intimacy straight into the scene where there is no boundary between the stage and the audience.
Director Charlotte De Wit (co-founder / artistic director of HER productions along with Marigold Pazar) creates the simmering pressure-cooker environment of Uncle Vanya, a play that does not “shout at you with what it’s trying to say” but rather speaks through subtlety and subtext. This is the third time the director has revisited this play with the majority of the actors. Through a searching enquiry of the adaptation by Annie Baker, the production finds connections to current situations to make it accessible to a contemporary audience. Through individuated performances, we feel the climate of melancholic mendacity that exists between the characters, and empathise with their anxieties around climate change, home ownership and finding love after 40.
Although the play’s tension stems from the triangulation of love interests, its most fruitful moments are when the characters have their moment in the spotlight, sharing their thoughts and vulnerabilities with the audience. Doctor Mikhail Lvovich’s impassioned speech about climate change hits home both as a wake-up call and analogy to the barrenness of their existence. His brooding good looks and sophistication are irresistible to both Uncle Vanya’s niece, Sonya, and her step-mother, Yelena, whom both Doctor Mikahail and Uncle Vanya are in love with. Yet while Uncle Vanya is not a romantic idealist like the handsome doctor, his angst against lost youth, missed opportunities, and self-loathing is relatable, as well as his irk of Professor Serebryakov’s pretentiousness and bloated self-worth. Vanya is not afraid to call a spade a spade. He is the underdog we root for in this play, embodied by actor Mike Booth as a ‘typical bloke’ who can’t stand BS.
The only moot point with this production is whether it achieves its objective of maintaining the fidelity of the original Russian text, so that certain speech patterns and slang meanings are not lost. To a certain extent this is achieved with immersive performances and stagecraft, but one cannot help but hear accents drawling into Summer Bay territory. That it encapulathes both a historical and contemporary context may be a bit jarring to some, but to be honest, the rendition of the Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) is a welcome, heart-warming anachronism.
Uncle Vanya features a cast of eight including Mike Booth (Ivan Petrovich, Vanya), Maike Strichow (Sofia Alexandrovna, Sonya), Tristan Mckinnon (Mikhail Lvovich, Astrov), Marigold Pazar (Yelena Andreyevna), Karen Lantry (Marina, Nanny), Dean Tuttle (Alexander Vladimirovic, Serebryakov), Katy Carruthers (Maria Vasilyevna), Tony Jozef (Ilya Ilyic, Telegin).
Uncle Vanya is playing at Flow Studios Camperdown till 27 April. For tickets and showtimes go to https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1152828.
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Images: Supplied