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This version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya is translated from the Russian by Greg Ulfans and Joseph Sherman. What happens on stage is a further interpretation or adaptation in an ambitious tilt at a modernised version of the play. This is a long night at the theatre, not without some high points in performance but somehow lacking in vitality. The turgid slow moving pointlessness of this story of wasted lives is elongated here to bum-numbing levels.
Something about this production, directed by Greg Ulfans, doesn’t cohere: the tone is uncertain and the approach veers too dramatically from mime, to melodrama, to naturalism, to stylised performance without seeming to know quite what it’s doing. The acting is self-conscious on the whole, with our attention directed too obviously to the moments of mimed business on stage. Apart from a few chairs and tables, big blocks of lego are the only props, metaphors for child’s play but this conceit doesn’t really work for the simple reason that there are no small children in the play; because the lego pieces are not matched by the rest of the set, they don’t make sense.
It’s hard to read the performances: for instance, Zoe Stark languishes as Yelena, posing with a down-turned mouth then later seems to turns into another character with fits of over-played rage; in the scene where the Doctor comes onto Yelena and declares his fascination for her she moves into a sort of pantomime style of performance.
The Professor (Scott Gooding) appears out of place and in another play altogether, his approach is at such odds with the rest of the cast. Joseph Sherman’s Vanya spends most of the play staring into the middle distance and it’s hard to sympathise with his bratty portrayal of the lovesick put-upon caretaker.
Leslie Simpson does a good job as the brooding and disillusioned doctor/cartographer Astrov, he along with Ruth Sancho Huerga are the strongest presences on stage. Huerga has terrific emotional range but again, it’s almost as though she’s on her own in another production, and her accent is distracting. Stephanie Osztreicher is too young for either Nanny or the mother, Maria, which is annoying given the wealth of actors of a certain age in this town.
The ensemble feeling isn’t there so you aren’t convinced the characters really know each other. Partly that is the fault of the script which involves sudden shifts in relationship, like the moment of sudden truce between Yelena and Sonya, that isn’t signposted. The music by Shane Grant provided a calming and low key backdrop; the live guitar was a nice touch.
3 out of 5 stars
La Mama Theatre, Melbourne
Dates: December 11 – December 22
