Lila Neugebauer, whose last bang-up directing assignment was Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate, has turned to Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in a new Heidi Schreck translation for Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont. Not that she hasn’t been preparing the production for what is apparently a significant while.
In an April 1, 2024 New Yorker profile, Neugebauer is quoted as saying when she received the call from producing artistic director André Bishop about taking Uncle Vanya on, she initially demurred. She’d read the play, of course, but when she had, was “just not getting it.” Nevertheless, she read it again and:
“I was stopped in my tracks. Some of the psychologies in the play just feel wildly contemporary—and the people, their anguish and their hilarities, I mean, they are so recognizable.”
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★☆☆☆ review here.]
A curious reaction. Aren’t classics considered classics for the very reason that characters’ psychologies are timelessly contemporary? Aren’t the characters’ anguishes and hilarities recognizable no matter what day or age in which they’re living? Isn’t, for instance, the guilt that ultimately undoes the Macbeths as contemporary now as it was in their world as well as when the Greek dramatists were reporting on human behavior during the fifth century B. C. E.?
Well, Neugebauer’s take certainly explains her intention — with Schreck in doubtless agreement — to ensure that today’s audience understands there’s nothing dated about Uncle Vanya, first seen in 1899. At no point does a family retainer carry a samovar on or off. At no point does costumer Kaye Voyce dress a secondary figure in threadbare serf rags. The cast is nicely outfitted in clothes that look vaguely of the moment but could pass for any moment of the last half century or more, though there does seem to be a reference to the 1940s.
What of the result, which unfolds on a Mimi Lien set specifying no more than “a country estate and working farm,” with high interior walls giving the impression the estate was once quite grand? There Chekhov’s unforgettable characters are again, speaking in familiar idioms, which — thank you, Heidi Schreck — haven’t incorporated obscenities that salt (assault?) the drama lexicon as so many tweaked plays and musicals insist on nowadays. (Chekhov dramas? Chekhov did regard his plays as comedies, suggesting that “comedy” must have had a somewhat different implication in the Russia of his days.)
Yes, here, as always, are Vanya (Steve Carell), Sonya (Alison Pill), Professor Alexander (Alfred Molina), Elena (Anika Noni Rose), Astrov (William Jackson Harper), Waffles (Jonathan Hadary), Marina (Mia Katigbak), Maria (Jayne Houdyshell,) and Neighbor (Spencer Donavan Jones) populating Chekhov’s four emotionally complex acts.
And now carrying out what familiar or reworked actions? It would be easy to lose count of how many times these isolated folks — stuck with each for the depressing nonce — claim, insist, complain, harangue, moan that they’re bored. Elena’s weary “I’m dying of boredom” might be the most disheartening, but every one of them is afflicted with the incurable mental virus.
It’s one thing, however, to present boredom, an obligation of any Uncle Vanya production. It’s an entire other thing to unveil a boring production. As the Chekhov idolator who was this reviewer’s plus-one cogently observed, “It’s treacherous territory when it has to be boring.”
The unfortunate news is that while not outrightly deficient, this Uncle Vanya — presenting figures dealing with boredom in an at-sixes-and-sevens societal climate — is somehow flat more often, surely, than director Neugebauer intends.
The situation mars the performances in different ways. Carell conveys Vanya’s frustrations at having subordinated his dreams (whatever they were) to benefit self-preoccupied, unobservant Alexander. Taking full advantage of one sequence to vent rage and then shame when firing on the professor twice and missing, Carell nonetheless falls short of conveying the man’s debilitating weariness. (Neugebauer stages the sorrowful-hilarious bit beautifully.)
Elements that should give any Uncle Vanya electricity aren’t met. Throughout, as Chekhov writes it, bored Elena is drawn to Astrov and he to her, but so little unspoken, so little implied occurs between Rose and Harper that when Elena admits her attraction, it’s a virtual surprise. Though the Chekhov-Schreck lines carry Alexander’s infuriating obtuseness, the usually expert Molina doesn’t extract enough from them. It’s as if Alexander’s disinterest has infected Molina’s acting.
Of the others, only Pill, expressing Sonya’s unrequited longing for Astrov, and Hadary, as truly comic figure Waffles, connect. (Hadary is adept with a concertina, especially in the production’s waning seconds.) Katigbak’s Marina is sufficiently involved. The ever-accomplished Houdyshell (has any actor been busier on Broadway in the last decade?) isn’t called on much and does whatever’s required in a long gray wig.
Uncle Vanya opened April 24, 2024, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater and runs through June 16. Tickets and information: lct.org
