As many of you know, I would rather go through a colonics session multiple times than sit through a Chekhov play. I’m also of the view that, after TUTA’s remount of their 2007 hit last year and Strawdog Theater’s current offering, we need another Uncle Vanya production in this city in the same way we need another increase in parking meter rates- befuddling and unwarranted. However, the Uncle Vanya that the famed Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg (one of the three European theaters designated as a prestigious “Theater of Europe”) brought to Chicago last week and weekend as part of Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s World Stage series, was not your run-of-the-mill, patience-thinning, narcolepsy-inducing Uncle Vanya, despite running close to three hours, and being performed in Russian with English surtitles. This was a beautifully wrought, immersively conceived, meticulously detailed production performed with astounding clarity by Chekhov’s countrymen, bringing with them the invaluable weight of cultural associations and lineage. This was as good a Chekhov production as you’re going to see ever in your lifetime (and I was very thrilled that this was the hottest cultural ticket in town last weekend, with all performances sold out).
My, and other, well, impatient, theatergoers’ complaint about Uncle Vanya is that nothing really happens in this play about an elderly intellectual and his young wife who comes back to the family estate and unsettles the lives of several people including his daughter, and his brother-in-law, Vanya. People sit around drinking, complaining, drinking, overanalyzing their lives, drinking, talking instead of doing. In most productions (including Sam Mendes’ acclaimed Donmar Warehouse/Brooklyn Academy of Music one that I saw a couple of years ago with Simon Russell Beales and Emily Watson), you can never really care about the characters, because they’re just so listless, whiny, and yes, pretty boring. I think one strategic mistake that many directors make with Uncle Vanya which makes it inaccessible and uninteresting to many audiences, is to let the production be staged with boatloads of ennui to evoke the failed, disappointed, untethered lives of its characters… instead of it being merely about ennui. But Maly Artistic Director Lev Dodin, one of the most respected theater professionals in the world, won’t have any of that; his Uncle Vanya has a palpable layer of graceful, floating, heartbreaking sadness but it is also spirited and passionate (yes, I also find it strange to use this adjective in describing this particular play). And I think it is primarily because of the performances that he brings out of his stellar, memorable cast, members of one of the most famous acting ensembles in the world.
Sergei Kurishev’s Vanya is spectacular, without any of the buffoonish quality that some actors infuse this character with in lesser productions. This Vanya is inadvertently funny and eccentric, but he is no fool. And in the way Kurishev performs his key scenes, such as his monologue in the second scene when he talks about how he wasted his opportunities, you can almost see the layers of fury encased in both bitter disappointment and helpless resignation, percolating under the surface. Not to be a dramatic diva, but I teared up during this scene. The other monumental performance in this production, in my opinion, is Ksenia Rappoport’s Elena, the young wife, who in other productions, seems to be a fluttery, evasive supporting player. Rappoport, who just won last year’s Venice Film Festival Best Actress award for the Italian film La Doppia Ora, gives a full-bodied, unwavering performance, delivering lines infused with defiance underneath the melancholy, such as when she talks about wanting to play the piano during the rainstorm, indicative of her failed aspirations as a music student. Everyone in the entire cast is splendid, giving very, very detailed performances: Vera Bikova’s elderly Nurse, for example, shuffles painfully and with her hand on her hip throughout the play; in one scene, Elena Kalinina’s impressively stoic and emotionally inscrutable Sonia lights up very briefly and very subtly when spoken to by Igor Chernevich’s Dr. Astrov, the man she is pining for.
Dodin uses other theatrical elements powerfully. The play is performed with the house lights on for most of the first act, indicating that we, the audience, may see parts of our lives in the lives that are being portrayed onstage. The late designer David Borovsky created three haystacks, which for most of the play, are suspended above the actors, conveying the unanchored nature of their lives. When at the end of the play, the three haystacks come down, it’s a fitting fini to the play – these characters have resigned themselves, with an unquestionable resolve, to the lives they’re leading, instead of the lives they hoped they would have. The music played in the play is Russian folk ballads, which not only gives a strong air of authenticity to the production, but also a tangible poignancy.
Kudos to Chicago Shakespeare for inviting the Maly Theatre of St. Petersburg, but it’s quite unfortunate that they were in Chicago for just five performances. This is world-class theater that Chicagoans, as global artistic citizens, should continue to have access to. If you’re in New York later this spring, catch them at Brooklyn Academy of Music from April 7-10. You’ll see Chekhov with new eyes.
Tags: Brooklyn Academy of Music, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg
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