Theatre review: Vanya

For the third play Simon Stephens has written specifically for Andrew Scott to perform, they've turned to Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, here retitled Vanya. If that suggests a laser focus on the title character it's actually quite the opposite: Stephens has turned it into something between a monologue and a one-man show, with Scott playing all the roles. I say monologue because there's more speeches being delivered straight to the audience than in the original, but the actor also has to interact with himself a lot: He plays Ivan (the character names have been mostly anglicised - he's only referred to by the eponymous nickname once,) who's been running his late sister Anna's farm most of his life; as well as his niece Sonia, and Michael, the alcoholic doctor she's unrequitedly in love with.

Sonia's father Alexander, a once-lauded but now largely irrelevant film director, has been living off the farm's profits for decades, but has now retired and come to live there, bringing with him eccentric habits that don't suit the strict rules of a working farm, as well as his beautiful but idle new wife Helena - who's caught the doctor's eye.

The various servants and hangers-on who populate Chekhov plays are also present, although not as much as in the original - this is probably more about streamlining the play for a single performer, but it does also helpfully get rid of the playwright's tendency to draw the story out so that every actor can get their moment at least once in every act. Stephens' script even nods at these cuts sometimes - "Oh, Elizabeth, I forgot you were there." It's a sense of mischief that helps lighten one of Chekhov's bleakest plays (in a... fairly strong field,) and matches the actor, who enters the stage with the house lights on and proceeds to explore Rosanna Vize's set, and play with the light switches until James Farncombe's lighting is to his liking.

Scott is one of those actors who convinces you that every part he plays was written for him, rather than a chameleon who turns himself into them all, so he's an interesting match for an adaptation like this. True to form, the characterisations are subtle rather than broad: There's little vocal differences, but there's also visual cues to tell us who he's playing at any given time - Ivan hides behind his shades, Helena fiddles with her necklace, and the always-working Sonia dries her hands on a tea-towel. It works better than it has any right to, both in terms of characterisation and in telling the story. (It's not a perfect approach though - the couple of attempts to have characters who inhabit the same body touch each other are awkward, and the least said about the sex scenes the better.)

Uncle Vanya's speeches on the environmental crisis, written over a century ago, are so prescient they can feel like someone's heavy-handedly rewritten them to make them topical, but they're certainly one of the things that make these plays stay relevant, and they remain a strong focus in Stephens' rewrite. But with all the characters that have been almost excised, it's interesting to me how much Sam Yates' production seems to foreground one who isn't even there: Somewhere in the background is a piano belonging to the long-dead Anna, and it's used as the connection between her and her brother. It's not something everyone will happen to be looking at, but at times its keys play themselves. It puts on stage the ghost of the woman whose dowry this farm originally was, and beyond the fact that her death has left everyone at Alexander's mercy, I think I felt the character more genuinely missed by Scott's characters here than in any full-cast production I've seen. Yes, this is a showcase for an actor whose superstar status is well-deserved, and vindicated here; but I'm pleased to say I also got some more out of it than just The Andrew Scott Show.

Vanya by Simon Stephens, created by Simon Stephens, Andrew Scott, Sam Yates and Rosanna Vize, after Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, is booking until the 21st of October at the Duke of York's Theatre (most performances returns only.)

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.