UNCLE VANYA

Chekhov has become unusually popular, perhaps an indication that audiences share something of fin-de-siècle Tsarist Russia’s sense of exhaustion and potential calamity, as much as continued admiration of the great master of the tragi-comedy of wasted lives and disappointed expectations. This Uncle Vanya follows upon two excellent earlier revivals in 2012: Lucy Bailey’s intimate Vanya at the Print Room and Jeremy Herrin’s forceful interpretation at Chichester.

While this is a solidly traditional example of English Chekhov, there is much to like about director Lindsay Posner’s production at the Vaudeville and some particularly fine, nuanced, extremely watchable acting from three of the leads: Ken Stott as a lugubrious, energetic but crumpled Vanya; Samuel West as the earnest, would-be ecological visionary Dr Astrov, and Anna Friel as the rapturously beautiful Yelena, who wears her ennui and unctuous self-sacrifice like a ball and chain. Christopher Hampton’s translation is robust, earthy and colloquial and manages to create simultaneously a sense of the period and the characters’ flesh-and-blood lives.

Christopher Oram’s complex set created a convincing wooden dacha, but gives a leaden feel to the proceedings; its complexity necessitated lengthy scene changes, which eroded the tension. Laura Carmichael’s Sonya, the other lead character, was disappointing and somewhat irritating. Her intonation was whiney and lacking in variety, and she seemed to have been directed to embody a woman whose only desire was to be a passive victim in the face of adversity, making herself as unattractive as she thinks herself to be. But this is mistaken, as it undermines the character’s journey towards becoming the emblem of quietist fortitude towards suffering at the play’s conclusion and turns her instead into a one-note stereotype.

However, Stott, West and Friel bring continual surprises and considerable emotional journeys to their roles. For instance, Friel’s Yelena yawns at West’s passionate account of the area’s deforestation, while West’s self-absorbed Astrov realises he loves the world as an abstraction rather than an actuality. Stott’s Vanya, seated silently at the table, shows in his expression alone an intense portrayal of devastated failure and lost dreams pace Sonya’s hopes of religious salvation. This production almost succeeds, as Chekhov intended, in expanding our empathy towards others’ suffering and their half-lived lives.

Vaudeville Theatre, 404 Strand, London WC2, until 16 February 2013: 0844-482 9675, www.vaudevilletheatre.org.uk