Extra to the purpose, it looks as if an impressed match. Vanya is an effective man with a deep, compassionate coronary heart. He’s additionally irascible, sarcastic, indolent: his personal worst enemy. This odd bundle of traits could be very a lot in sync with Carell’s comedian persona.
On the similar time, the thought is an intriguing stretch. Vanya is one in every of the nice theatrical roles—and a problem for any actor. For Carell—nonetheless identified primarily from TV and movies—to take it on on the prestigious Lincoln Middle venue is without delay humble and ballsy. It implies a want to increase audiences’ sense of him.
Anyway, that’s what I hoped for. In observe, the result’s extra dispiriting.
Directed by Lila Neugebauer and that includes a brand new translation/adaptation by Heidi Schreck, this Uncle Vanyaisn’t a lot Carell and firm stepping as much as a brand new problem as refashioning Chekhov’s play right into a Steve Carell film.
Theatrically talking, that’s the mountain coming to Mohammed… with predictably combined outcomes.
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Earlier than we get there, a bit concerning the play. Uncle Vanya is the primary of what would grow to be Chekhov’s 4 canonical (certainly, theater-changing) performs, and introduces us to lots of his core qualities.
We’re on a big nation property, owned by the distinguished, profitable, pompous professor Alexander Serebryakov, who’s right here along with his younger and exquisite second spouse, Elena. (I’m utilizing right here the transliterated names on this model.) Others are staying on the property, together with Sonia (Alexander’s daughter) and Vanya (Alexander’s brother-in-law: his late first spouse was Vanya’s sister). Astrov, a neighborhood physician, lives right here too, and shares frequent, mordant conversations with Vanya.
The floor plot includes particulars about the way forward for the property and its administration. In the end, although, what issues extra is the intertwined lives of its central characters. There’s love and loyalty amongst them, however on this fishbowl world resentments and problems develop, together with romantic ones. Sonia loves Astrov. Astrov loves Elena. Elena loves Astrov… however is, after all, married to Alexander. Vanya in a way is an observer right here, however in temper and circumstances, carefully bonded to his niece, Sonia. For each, life strikes on, however seemingly with solely restricted potentialities.
Chekhov famously thought of no less than a few of his performs “comedies,” and Uncle Vanya definitely has a farcical overlay in its construction: A is in love with B who’s in love with C, and so forth.
However—that is all the time rooted in a deep sense of pathos and craving: laughing by means of tears is a lifestyle. Search for the time period “Chekhovian,” and also you’ll see for your self!
At Lincoln Middle, Chekhov’s plot stays, and in reality Schreck’s translation—comfortably colloquial however cannily evading something particularly up to date—may nonetheless work in a interval setting (the play was first produced in 1899). However Neugebauer and particularly costume designer Kaye Voyce make it clear that that is taking place in a recent world.
Extra jarringly, the appearing model throughout the board has a free, typically hipsterish trace of snark. Whereas it registers the type of incurable ennui that lies on the coronary heart of Chekhov’s play—a gaggle of people who find themselves destined to be in one another’s firm however principally failing to attach in any pleased sense—the humor, particularly within the first scenes, is overplayed—and for me, this Uncle Vanya by no means recovers.
For on a regular basis shifting and novelty, it additionally suffers from one other frequent weak hyperlink in Chekhov productions: the absence of a cohesive theatrical model. These characters could also be disparate, however they type a group and are a part of the identical milieu; right here, even relations appear to come back from completely completely different worlds.
Because the pedantic Alexander, Alfred Molina brings a scale and brio that will work nicely in a conventional staging; nevertheless it feels a bit odd right here. On the different finish of the spectrum, William Jackson Harper very imaginatively invests Astrov with a droll trendy spin, nevertheless it reduces the character’s deeper and extra interesting traits.
Anika Noni Rose is simpler suggesting Yelena’s glamour and hauteur than the fervour that underlies it. It’s the alternative state of affairs for Alison Tablet as Sonia. This glorious actress right here is consistently febrile, steadily dissolving into tears. The good pathos of Sonia is her heartbreaking invisibility. That high quality could be extra successfully conveyed by means of quiet acceptance of her dreary future.
After which, after all, there’s Steve Carell’s Vanya. He’s a snug stage actor, working the gauntlet right here from clowning to rage to grief. To me, although, it appears like a powerful show of expertise from the actor’s toolkit. An viewers is definitely meant to seek out Vanya past exasperating, however I feel we additionally want to like him. Frankly, I can’t get previous Carell’s smugness.
Given this manufacturing’s comedic slant, it’s no shock that two actors in small and humorous supporting components come off greatest. Mia Katigbak (as Marina, an aged household nurse) and Jonathan Hadary (Waffles, a type of loony hanger-on) are unfailingly pleasant.
It’s no shock both that director Lila Neugebauer hasn’t fused this right into a cohesive universe or an emotionally compelling one. Staged on Mimi Lien’s intentionally spare set, the visible world is picturesque however hardly ever greater than that.
The vastness of the Vivian Beaumont Theater is one other problem—it’s an unfavorite area of mine, one that may work for musicals however hardly ever for performs. Absolutely it is a large a part of the issue right here, I believed.
But hours later, I remembered having seen Chekhov’s Ivanov right here nearly 30 years in the past. That manufacturing, directed by the late Gerald Gutierrez and that includes Kevin Kline and a fairly starry ensemble, is one of the best American manufacturing of a Chekhov play I’ve ever seen.
The Beaumont could not have been superb, however the present very practically was—maybe as a result of the corporate didn’t strive so laborious to place a brand new gloss on it.
Photographs: Marc J. Franklin
