Trevor Nunn has at last completed his director’s bucket list of the four major Chekhov plays. Uncle Vanya was always the one that got away from him. I know how he feels: I have one left to translate, The Cherry Orchard.
Nunn ran the RSC from 1968 to 1986, the National Theatre from 1997 to 2003, and here he is in the intimate 180-seater Orange Tree Theatre in-the-round, one of my favourite theatres. I am pleased to see many young faces amongst its local senior citizens.
First-timers and regulars show this production much appreciation except for one man in the front row who shows more interest in the object of his desire in the adjacent row. His gaze is never at the playing arena. He looks bored, as he eats his crisps, drinks his wine, looks at his phone and Apple watch under the noses of the actors. He’s here for her… I’m guessing, life imitating art perhaps…
It’s as if he’s reflecting poor Vanya (James Lance), buried in the country and bored out of his skull with the daily grind until his brother-in-law Professor Serebryakov (William Chubb) comes to stay with his languid young second wife, Elena (Lily Sacofsky). He’s not the only one jolted out of his rut: Dr Astrov (Andrew Richardson) gets the hots for her shallow beauty. Country life will not be the same again for these two hirsute (only Waffles beats them in the hair department) drinking companions.
I say ‘the hots’ following the example of current-day turns of phrase Nunn has chosen to use in his traditional period dress production, “adapted and directed” by him. Original translation is not credited. “Fuck” (when Vanya misses his shot), “nutcase’, “health-wise”, ”same old same old”, “don’t give a toss”, “squiffy”, “a screw loose”, “brain-damaged”...
Does it energise the play?—mildly. But, by using contemporary vernacular, Nunn has got to the subtext of the play. The characters speak their minds—it’s a process I remember from drama school, not saying the lines but saying their meaning in our own words.
A kernel in a walnut shell, Simon Daw’s period nostalgic ‘Russian’ set is brilliant, with weeds growing up from the wooden floorboards, somehow managing to expand the square footage of the claustrophobic arena to encompass a table with obligatory samovar and Turkish-style glass teacups, several chairs, wicker armchair, stool and a garden bench. Hamlet’s “I could be bounded in a nutshell" springs to mind—Chekhov was much influenced by Hamlet—who better than Nunn, director of all thirty-seven of Shakespeare’s plays, to understand this… That confined space, with actors and audience in such intimidating close proximity, is the ideal metaphor for suffocating lives albeit on territorially vast estates.
Max Pappenheim’s guitar evocative soundscape underscores the mood perfectly, but I do wish the ‘Kalinka’ folk song had been avoided. It's too joyful, even in the context of Astrov’s tree planting. Nunn’s production is like so many English (and Russian) Chekhovs I’ve seen in my time: fixed in aspic, sepia ghosts going through the tortured motions.
Though I must say Sonya, Vanya’s niece who helps him to run the estate, the daughter of his late sister, as portrayed by Madeleine Gray, brings a breath of fresh air—it is impeccable casting. Not only does she look right—that soft face—but her listening mode facial expressions are so genuine. I can’t take my eyes off her.
Quiet, gentle Gray acts them all off the stage; she is Sonya. Why no one falls in love with her innocence I can’t imagine. Why are Astrov and Vanya so taken by the external and not see the pure soul under their feet? Her final poignant, comforting speech to her uncle Vanya, of faith in the future, in God, should bring tears to one’s eyes.
Lance’s chip-on-his-shoulder Vanya does not elicit much sympathy; Richardson’s Astrov is fine but what a change of roles after Guys and Dolls; Sacofsky’s Elena is underdeveloped. Chubb’s Professor, Susan Tracy’s Maria (Vanya’s mother elegant in black) roles have been trimmed, as has David Ahmad’s Telegin / Waffles. Marina (Juliet Garricks) the nanny has seen it all before.
The focus is on unrequited love and age. Their ages are given in the programme’s cast list. Approaching this play late in life, I wonder if Nunn is more sympathetic to the “recently retired” Professor. His wife Elena at 27 is closer in age to 22-year-old Sonya, and to 35-year-old Astrov. If Vanya at 47 feels over the hill—“I could have been a Dostoevsky or a Schopenhauer”—is this because Chekhov (1860–1904) knew his own time would be short? At least this version must have had a long time to simmer over the years in Nunn’s mind.
More than a hundred years separate us from them—the play is set in 1897 “in the south of Russia” (Nunn dedicates this production to Navalny), which could indeed be Ukraine. Astrov’s hope for humanity’s evolution and an ecologically better future has not come to be. What awaited the estate’s landed country folk was revolution and war. Their indolence would be swept away, if not the alcoholism. But Chekhov lives on, his concerns and characters transcending time and place.