Angela Beyer, Andy Kallok, and Anabela Nguyen (Photo by Paul Rubenstein)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
City Garage
Through March 29
RECOMMENDED
Taylor Lee Marr and Troy Dunn (Photo by Paul Rubenstein)
Since it was first produced in 1899 at the Moscow Art Theatre, adaptations of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya have proliferated. It appears that adaptors can’t wait to get their ink-stained fingers on Chekhov’s classic tale about the conflicts raging on a struggling Russian estate where the arrival of an elderly professor and his beautiful young wife causes turmoil.
It’s easy to see why Vanya attracts so many adaptors. Dramatically speaking, it’s hot stuff, with unrequited love triangles, powder keg conflicts, and a blitz of monologues from absurdly self-referential characters for whom life has been one unending cycle of disappointment. Chief among them is, of course, the comically lugubrious Vanya, whose relentless self-pity fuels both sympathy and exasperation.
But all that doesn’t quite explain the current Vanya craze, which has recently kicked into high gear with such productions as Heidi Schreck’s Americanized 2024 adaptation starring Steve Carell, which did turn-away business on Broadway. Then there was Simon Stephens’s stripped-down 2023 one-man version starring the virtuosic Andrew Scott playing all the roles. Conor McPherson’s 2019 version was enthusiastically received in London before being shuttered by Covid. And those are just a few of the iterations cropping up, seemingly every few months or so.
A worthy addition to the crowded ranks, Neil Labute’s updating, now at City Garage, captures the essence of Chekhov’s play without vandalizing it. Known for his in-your-face, often shocking dramas, LaBute may be a theatrical gadfly, but he knows his way around a classic, evidenced not only by this Vanya, but also by his superb adaptation of Antigone, which recently ran at this theater.
LaBute conforms to the basic outlines of Chekhov’s play but with subtly contemporaneous language. Director Frédérique Michel, who helmed both Antigone and this Vanya, boldly addresses LaBute’s offering in a smooth, almost dancerly staging that ranges from the reflective to moments of pure slapstick.
However, her cast is uneven. As Vanya, Troy Dunn, a seasoned City Garage regular, initially mutters and mumbles to an almost incomprehensible degree, a mannered style that seems more suited to cinema than stage. Fortunately, Dunn commands his later scenes when Vanya’s dithering submissiveness gives way to rage.
As Sonya, Vanya’s niece and indefatigable fellow worker on the estate, Anabela Nguyen is a capable actor (she played Antigone in the recent City Garage production) who has been miscast here. Sonya frequently references the fact that she is plain, but Nguyen’s youth and indisputable attractiveness denude her character of depth. Her complaints about her supposed homeliness are not credible.
As Yelena, the beautiful young wife of the elderly Professor Serebryakov (Andy Kallok, hesitant on his lines on opening night), sultry Angela Beyer delivers an economical, nicely reserved turn as the reluctant siren who wields an obsessive fascination over both Vanya and Astrov (Taylor Lee Marr), a local doctor intent on seducing her.
Sporting a long ponytail and a breezy manner, Marr turns in the most modern performance in this refreshingly updated play. His intrepid cheekiness as he faces a bleak and lonely future captures the of-the-moment immediacy of this flawed but admirable production.
Charles Duncombe, Michel’s longtime collaborator and company co-founder, did the handsome production design but should consider turning down the decibel level of those chirping birds in the early scenes — twittering so loud it sounds more Hitchcockian than bucolic.
This production ultimately finds the pulse of Chekhov’s work: the uneasy blend of longing, resentment, and endurance that defines ordinary lives. In the hands of LaBute and Michel, “Vanya” feels less like a museum piece than a living argument about regret, the dawning suspicion that, despite all yearning and self-reflection, nothing will actually happen — an unsettling and tragic realization.
City Garage, 2525 Michigan Ave., Santa Monica. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 4 pm; thru March 29. www.citygarage.org. Running time: two hours and 30 minutes with anintermission.
