Theatre in Review: Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep)

	Merritt Wever, Reed Birney, Michael Shannon. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

The director Sam Gold has said that his ambition was to create a production of Uncle Vanya that retained the intimacy of a living room reading. To achieve this, he has built a small house inside Soho Rep. Andrew Lieberman, his set designer, has installed a skeletal A-frame structure that contains both the audience and the playing area, which is filled with the kind of ratty, mismatched furniture found in summer houses everywhere. There is virtually no separation between audience and actors; we see this brilliant comic drama in extreme close-up. It's a big gamble, but the payoff is considerable. It seems as if every Anton Chekhov revival also resurrects the never-ending debate about the correct approach to his plays; Gold's solution is to create a world that, despite its modern veneer, easily contains the author's distinctive mix of blunt comedy, frustrated romance, and existential despair.

This is a strategy that yields mixed results, to say the least, but the positives are impossible to dismiss. The setup allows for what it surely the most intimate reading of the play I've ever seen. Scene after scene is played with the kind of naturalism usually associated with film; the mordant comedy of opposed personalities driving each other mad at close quarters springs organically from the situation. Uncle Vanya is also structured around a trio of impossible, unrequited loves; when the characters, unable to contain themselves any longer, reveal their unsatisfied longings, their voices evoke the hush of the confessional.

Contributing enormously to the production's effect is Annie Baker's adaptation, which is cool, often bitterly funny, and thoroughly uninterested in romanticizing the terrible loneliness afflicting the characters. The text is filled with modern locutions. "I've become a creep, Nanny," confesses the self-hating Dr. Astrov. He also refers to a colleague as "a paramedic." "The air feels amazing," notes Yelena, the trophy wife of an aging academic, who is driving to distraction all the men in her orbit. "When you talk about your love for me, I go completely blank," she tells one of her suitors. In a full-dress, in-period production, this approach might seem the height of affectation. In a crowded living room, with the cast clad in casual wear (jeans, t-shirts), it has the effect of dissolving the years, resulting in a drama that feels contemporary while never fully surrendering its grounding in pre-revolutionary Russia. It's all here -- the sense of time and money running out, a way of life is being eroded by deforestation, a cast of characters who, whether they are beasts of burden or paralyzed by idleness, find little or no meaning in their lives.

It's especially hard to argue with any production that yields such incisive performances, beginning with Reed Birney in the title role. A farmer who, in honor of his beloved dead sister, has wasted his life, turning over every available kopeck to his brother-in-law, Serebryakov, Vanya is a classic study in clinical depression -- a man who, in his late 40s, knows that the story of his life is essentially finished, no matter how long he lives. Birney gets every bit of acid out of Vanya's tart observations. Noting the Serebryakov is composing yet another bloviating pamphlet, he says, "I feel bad for the paper." He describes his brother-in-law as "writing about the things that intelligent people already know and stupid people aren't interested in." Obsessed with Serebyrakov's young wife, Yelena, he adds, "Her fidelity is false. It's good rhetoric but bad logic." (Baker's writing really shines in these moments.) Yet, when he approaches Yelena to bare his feelings, his absolute lack of hope is, oddly, terribly moving. And when, infuriated at Serebryakov's proposal to enrich himself by selling the family estate -- dispossessing Vanya in the bargain -- the latter's unbridled rage is something to behold. Birney, always a fine actor, has been on a roll lately -- often in plays directed by Gold -- and this may be his finest achievement yet.

His is not the only exceptional contribution. Michael Shannon's Astrov, trapped in a career that bleeds his soul and obsessed with his futile plan to salvage the neighboring forest, is equally ravaged, no more so than when he opens his closed-up heart to the unwilling Yelena. The latter is embodied in all her languor and misapplied intelligence by Maria Dizzia, lounging on a couch and dismissing any plausible activity. Peter Friedman's Serebryakov is painfully aware of his failing powers, yet remains unable to abandon his sense of entitlement; his shocked pause when Vanya rebels against his estate-sale plan is, arguably, the most telling in a production filled with such moments. Georgia Engel is superb as Marina, the elderly servant, who watches the dissolution around her with a worried eye, and who can't curb herself when the truth must be told. (Among other things, she informs Astrov that he has lost his looks.) Rebecca Shull makes a great deal out of the small role of Vanya's mother, a provincial intellectual who worships Serebryakov.

To enjoy these fine performances, however, you have to put up with more than a few inconveniences. First, there's the seating, consisting of several rows of carpeted bleachers, which, by nature of their setup, virtually demand that you sit cross-legged for nearly three hours. Unless you are lithe of limb, you will want to stake a claim on one of the handful of seats located in the rear. The second obstacle is Mark Barton's lighting design, which takes Gold's naturalistic mandate a step too far in Act II, which is set at night. The entire scene appears to be lit by four or five table lamps -- a tiny amount of additional illumination is provided by the ellipsoidal units hanging overhead -- but, for more than half an hour, it is almost impossible to read the actors' faces. This a big miscalculation; that one retains any interest in the play is a tribute to the cast's skill. Despite the general acting excellence, I have reservations about Merritt Wever, whose Sonya -- Serebryakov's plain daughter who works side by side with Vanya on the estate -- errs on the side of practicality; the scene in which she faces the fact that Astrov will never love her and must be sent away is conspicuously lacking in any sense of heartbreak. Finally, Gold milks the ending, letting it drag on too long; it's the only moment in the entire production when one feels that the director is making his point with too much emphasis.

Still, this is a bold, lively approach to a text that is so frequently staged these days that the danger of familiarity breeding contempt is omnipresent. You needn't worry about that here; Chekhov's words sound as if they were written yesterday. "In a hundred years, people will laugh at us," says Astrov; more than a hundred years have passed since Uncle Vanya was first done, and, yes, people are laughing, but it is laughter born out of the shock of recognition, laughter offered as a defense against truths too painful to take straight up. Gold and his company don't always make it easy for us, but they offer a view of Chekhov's text that is both true to the author's intent and entirely fresh.--David Barbour