Also this issue:

Three Sisters
Theatre Exile presents a world premiere that’s a real family affair.
-Deni Kasrel

Remembering Ella
Local artists react to the death of Ella King Torrey
-David Warner

Still Here
Elaine Stritch (still) isn’t afraid to speak her mind.
-A.D. Amorosi

Gentlemen Volunteers
-Juliet Fletcher

Philadanco
-Janet Anderson

Project Room Benefit Party
-Debra Auspitz

Rennie Harris Puremovement at Salute to Youth
-Deni Kasrel

Stango Gallery opening
-Debra Auspitz

May 8-14, 2003

theater

Uncle Vanya

by Toby Zinman

"What's new?" one character asks. "Nothing's new" is the inevitable reply -- both true and untrue as a report on these characters' lives as well as of Emily Mann's adaptation of Chekhov's beloved play. This luminous, human production, full of quirks and foibles and tics -- as well as heartbreaking longing and disappointment -- is both true to the source and new enough to show you things you'd never seen in the play before.

The main revelation for me was the (finally!) obvious meaning of the title: Vanya is called Uncle only by Sonya -- so in some way, it's her play. With Amanda Plummer in that role, the balance of power shifts and Sonya is no longer what she often is -- a devout, mousy creature overshadowed by the gorgeous, languid Yelena -- but rather an intelligent, suffering woman whose final speech about heavenly rewards is both movingly self-delusional and ironically limited. It's a long way from the diner table in Pulp Fiction, but the profound oddness Plummer projects is still there in the darting eyes, the peculiar posture, the way she compulsively touches herself. Sonya comes alive as an interesting neurotic. And how could she be otherwise in this family?

There is, typical of Chekhov, only the shred of a plot: A retired scholar returns with his young, beautiful wife to the country estate of his first wife, where his daughter, Sonya, his dead wife's brother, Vanya and the old mother live with a variety of hangers-on and servants. Both Vanya (Steven Skybell) and the family friend, Dr. Astrov (Michael Siberry), fall for Yelena: Vanya with hopeless ardor, and Astrov with lustful admiration. One is all heat and melodrama, the other all cool defeat. Caught in the suffering is Sonya, plain, hardworking, self-effacing, intelligent, who has loved Astrov silently for six years. The Professor (William Biff McGuire) is a pompous windbag, unable to see the cruelty of his various exploitations, and Yelena (Natacha Roi), his once-adoring wife, is now simply exhausted and fed up. Interestingly, she is not the bitchy beauty she is often played as, but a woman who is trapped by her past errors and present inertia; Roi conveys little of the self-disgust that comes with self-knowledge, which is (to my mind) the hallmark of Yelena's character. I felt the same lack of complexity in Skybell's Vanya; when Astrov says to Vanya near the end, "You are a ridiculous fool and you know it," we should be certain he does know it, since, as Chekhov shows us in play after play, it's the knowing it that's so hard to live with.

Their long Russian days are spent in hollow complaining and bursts of absurd passion. It's always the wrong temperature -- open the window, close the widow, put on a shawl, take off a shawl -- and the tea is always cold. What a life, masquerading as privilege, full of self-mocking, self-absorbed impossible people. The trick with Chekhov is how to make these annoying people a pleasure to watch. In Act I there is the worry that they may be too annoying to bear, but after awhile, you move into the house with them, and Acts II and III are subtle and fine.

Michael Yeargan's set is full of Chekhovian ironies: a beautiful stand of immense trees ("the ornaments of the world!" the ecological Dr. Astrov calls them) outdoors, and indoors, wooden chairs and wooden tables and wooden desks and wooden paneled walls -- visual testimony to this world's sad and preposterous self-sabotage.