Uncle Vanya review

Heidi Schreck’s comedy-heavy translation of Chekhov’s drama has a contemporary setting and tone. With sitcom stars to bring that vision to life, director Lila Neugebauer’s production is playful. That high-key brightness upfront means that the weight of the characters’ struggles sneaks up on us in this eventually heart-breaking production.

Schreck’s version makes direct connections to current events. The portrayal of the doctor Astrov, in medical scrubs and suffering with non-stop work exhaustion, nods to the pandemic, and his reveries about the forest are steeped in the language of climate change. While these concepts slot in comfortably, allusions to the professor Serebryakov as a famous, lavishly worshipped intellectual feel archaic by comparison.

The acting is neurotic, even frantic. Astrov (William Jackson Harper) is wound tight, running on vodka and sleeplessness, sarcastic in tone and comically shouting about how he is among “freaks” and his moustache is “weird”. He and Vanya (The Office’s Steve Carell) are playful drunks, giddily dancing together. In a sudden rainstorm, Carell’s Vanya doesn’t dodge the deluge, laughing through the soaking until he is crying. Carell’s intentionally irritating whininess makes it difficult to separate his Vanya from his well-known television persona, which is initially off-putting, but his performance evolves into something closer to a sad clown, and when pushed to the brink, he delivers all the necessary pathos.

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