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Anton Chekhov was one of the great humorists. His short stories and his plays reflect the delicate laughter, often behind the indelicate tragedies, of the human soul and heart. His great talent lay in his ability to make his audience, readers or observers, feel something genuine for the characters he paraded before them. He wrote four plays considered "great" plays: The Cherry Orchard, The Sea Gull, The Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya. In each of these works someone is tortured by an emotion that cannot be controlled and someone else is deeply moved by that emotion. In Uncle Vanya, now on stage in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in a new production by Barrington Stage Company, it is Vanya who feels the deepest and most dangerous emotions and his niece Sonya who is moved. These two are the core of the tale being told and these are the two people we must care the most about. Director Julianne Boyd has somehow taken our attention from them and targeted it elsewhere, then left us with Chekhov’s original center at the final fadeout. A dangerous choice to have made.
When the writing is in the form of tapestry - a woven picture where all elements are integral, it is hard to choose where the eye should meet the story. That is what has happened here. Paul Schmidt’s translation is so contemporary and American vernacular oriented that it becomes hard to put it with the images before us. The play is set, as it should be, in the late 1890s. The plot is oddly old-fashioned, largely due to the character of Sonya. She is in love with a doctor who visits the family often, but she is plain and unsure of herself and so she holds back with him. Her only confidante is her Uncle Vanya who manages the farm and estate for her father, a professor who has recently married a younger woman, only a few years older than Sonya. Vanya, an eternal bachelor, is in love with his new sister-in-law. Unfortunately, so is the doctor. Here is where it becomes difficult to focus attention.
The young wife is gorgeous. Everyone in the story is revolving around her. But the focus needs to remain on Sonya and her relationship with her Uncle. Chekhov makes this challenging. We are bounced back and forth and when Vanya finally takes center stage with his own fire and rage it seems somehow wrong, as though the cart were indeed before the horse, but it is what Chekhov intends from the outset. Where Boyd’s lovely production goes wrong is in placing Vanya at the periphery of the story rather than letting his presence grow visibly stronger gradually.
Jack Gilpin is an excellent Vanya. His long, lanky body and face, his permanently morbid expressions, his warm, strong voice make him a wonderful choice for this role. A reference to the world around him and the people in it as "staggering with inertia" is the best way to describe his performance. When he is in our sight, as he is when he accidentally discovers unanticipated lovers, he is brilliant. Miniature dramas play out in his face and in his body. He is everything he should be, but the lights aren’t shining on him when they could. This Vanya, as well played as he is by Gilpin, is too often an extra in the fabric of this play.
Heidi Armbruster infuses Yelena with the sensual beauty she needs and also gives her an extraordinary strength as she tries to extricate herself from illicit passion. It would be hard for this actress to be anything other than the center of this comic drama of family and fortune gone awry. Armbruster is both lovely to look at and lovely to hear as she creates confusion around her.
Likewise Alaina Warren Zachary confuses us with her support of her son-in-law over her own son, Vanya. She has a placid exterior, but it clearly conceals some long-withheld animosity. In Vanya’s most vivid moments she is deliberately non-affirming. An elegant woman she is without a soul in this country of souls and this makes her a wonderful counterpart to Yelena.
Patricia Conolly is Marina, the servant everyone counts on. She plays her part very well indeed. The same can be said for Robert Grossman as Telegin, the neighbor who seems to never go home.
Mark L. Montgomery is Astrov, the almost handsome doctor who is loved by Sonya, and seduced by Yelena. He is wonderful in his role and clearly uncomfortable at times in his situation. He plays the man trapped by circumstances with nervous habits and with restless gestures. At the end of the play we are left feeling that Sonya is well out of this romance, and that is due entirely to Montgomery’s quietly bombastic performance.
Kenneth Tigar is a perfect Professor. He makes us hate him with a quiet and controlled playing that erupts once and never again.
It is Keira Naughton as Sonya who ultimately holds all of this together. At the end of the second act (second scene here) she movingly reconciles with her step-mother. Then, at the end of the fourth act (fourth scene) she removes all doubt about her sincerity and her love and admiration for her Uncle Vanya when she consoles him with her speech about life and death and rest for the weariness that wariness brings to the unloved. She and Gilpin leave the lasting picture in this play, which is as it should be. It just takes us a long while to gather our attention to that center-stage picture.
Karl Eigsti’s set is beautiful and functional, odd in some ways and classic in others. Elizabeth Flauto provides beautifully right costumes for these players, although Vanya’s suit felt peculiarly twentieth century. Scott Pinkney’s lighting is mood-inflected and never seriously focused on the two players whom Chekhov would have us watch most closely. Vanya and Sonya need that help, a light from without to illumine the lights within.
As tapestry fades into sameness, so does this production, tonal qualities of a golden beige dominating all of the pictures. It is beautiful to look at, but it needs something to pull our attention. The red dress of Yelena is too much. It takes our attention away from the center. We need to have principal figures brought more to the forefront and that is where this production lets us down. But this production is a treat to the senses, a wall-hanging that shows its ensemble artistry for a long time and ultimately shines light where it needs to be shone.
◊08/13/2007◊
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