Uncle Vanya, St James Theatre, by Anton Chekhov (new version by Anya Reiss)

Life is long and bleak in Anton Chekhov’s prophetic Uncle Vanya. People come and people go but everything stays obstinately the same. Much like Chekhov’s other country-estate set tragicomedies, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya picks apart and analyses the decisions and insecurities that condemn some people to an unhappy life.

 

Vanya tends a country estate with the help of his niece Sonya. Their lives are lived in tedious isolation until Sonya’s revered academic father returns with his alluring new wife Yelena. Their arrival sparks a bruising existential crisis within Vanya as he wrestles with his desire for Yelena 

Sometimes all Chekhov plays feel the same. There is a bleak core coated in humour. There are minor players oblivious to the impending doom. There is uncertainty about the future and an aching boredom associated with the present. It doesn’t sound like a great cocktail but it is a recipe that cuts deep to the core. Chekhov is one of the only dramatists who can ruffle his audience without resorting to lurid violence or cutting language. His subtlety is profound. It’s edifying when it works; it’s achingly painful when it doesn’t.

Russell Bolam’s new production at the St James Theatre peters on the edge of failure. Its chaotic delivery obfuscates some of the play’s punch but the final two acts are a master class in tense Chekhovian drama; the last half hour in particular is excruciatingly bleak.

 

Anya Reiss is making a name for herself as an adept translator. After recent stirring versions of The Seagull and Three Sisters, her take on Uncle Vanya is firmly rooted in the iPad generation. Astrov uses a MacBook to show plans to Yelena; other characters stay glued to tablet computers throughout. This modernity is reflected in the biting language that wouldn’t be out of place in a university common room.

This is the third time Reiss and Bolam have collaborated on a Chekhov production and this version follows the template laid out by Three Sisters and The Seagull. This version of Uncle Vanya doesn’t work as well as their version of Three Sisters earlier in the year. The later carefully plotted its way through the sister’s longing but Vanya lacks the subtlety that made Three Sisters a minor triumph.

John Hannah (Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Mummy) initially seems out of this depth as the buffoonish Vanya. In the early scenes he overplays the comedy and misses the pathos that lies deep within the character. He is, however, fantastic in the later scenes when we see the full extent of Vanya’s despair. There is strong support from the rest of the ensemble and John Dixon is particularly impressive as the charismatic but flawed Astrov.

This is not a classic production.  Reiss’s explosive adaptation of Three Sisters had more bite and more successfully updated the play to the modern day. A production of The Cherry Orchard will inevitably follow in the next year or so. Let’s hope Bolam and Reiss find a firmer footing for that play’s sustained tragedy.