Theatre review: Uncle Vanya

Mere months since Chekhov's Vanya last graced a London stage he's back, although this time he's brought the rest of the cast with him too. With Trevor Nunn both adapting and directing this version of Uncle Vanya it's not particularly surprising if it's a bit more traditional - Simon Daw's designs definitely take us to late 19th century rural Russia, and you bet there's a samovar in pride of place centre stage. But Nunn isn't just ticking another classic off his list or indulging in a bout of nostalgia, as the Orange Tree production has elements that give it its own personality. Not least of all in tone: One of Chekhov's bleaker plays, it wasn't even questionably billed as a comedy like many of them, but the blurb here calls it a tragicomedy, and that's something it pulls off. The setting is the country estate that once belonged to Vanya's sister, purchased as a dowry for when she married a St Petersburg academic.

She died years ago, and the estate technically belongs to her daughter Sonya (Madeleine Gray,) but Vanya (James Lance) has continued to send almost every penny of profit from the land to his brother-in-law.

Now Serebryakov (William Chubb) has retired and remarried, and has actually moved into the farmhouse with the much younger Elena (Lily Sacofsky,) where he's proceeded to disrupt everyone's routine to suit him, while spending every waking hour complaining about how bad he's got it. Lance is a particularly misanthropic Vanya: By the time we first meet him the scales have well and truly fallen from his eyes about the man whose supposed greatness they've all been financing for years at the expense of their own happiness. He's also in unrequited love with his brother-in-law's new wife.

Also falling for Elena, but getting a bit more interest back, is Dr Astrov (Andrew Richardson,) which is bad news for Sonya, who in turn has been in love with an oblivious Astrov for years. As Gray is a particularly wide-eyed and childlike Sonya, and Richardson is the personification of someone people call Daddy a lot when he doesn't have any kids, this is an obsession that's even more obviously doomed from the start than usual.

Not that Chekhov is generally action-packed but Uncle Vanya is particularly slow to get going - there's a lot of gradual character work before we really get any plot in Act III, and it probably doesn't help that everyone's always going on about how bored they are. Despite being a bit edited down this does feel particularly true at the start of Nunn's production, and I even felt like I was going to nod off at a couple of leisurely points. But that character groundwork does start to pay off nicely. Lance has a lot of comic experience which he brings even to a man in growing despair, with the first two acts often undercut by his bitchy asides.

By the third he knows not only that the man everyone including his mother (Susan Tracy) thinks is his superior is in fact a nonentity, but that the nonentity has never spared Vanya himself a second thought. His reaction can be an unintentionally funny moment, but the wrily comic tone of the production so far means it can be played as slightly more intentionally farcical. One thing that feels gently highlighted in this production is the fact that for all the focus on Vanya and Sonya working their lives away for someone else's benefit there's a further class commentary in the faithful old retainers Marina (Juliet Garricks) and Telegin (David Ahmad.) They don't have any big reaction to how casually Serebryakov is willing to throw their whole way of life away - they've known from the start nobody particularly cares about what they want.

It does sometimes feel like Nunn forgot how intimate this in-the-round theatre is - Daw's set is piled with so much furniture half the audience has to shimmy past it to get to and from their seats, and the other half are at constant risk of having one of the actors sit on their laps. On the plus side the initmacy means you can see the detailed little moments in the performances - Sonya's face falling when her father's seemingly positive speech about her drops in a dig about her being unmarried, or Serebryakov finally snapping at Vanya's tirade when he starts to reveal just how minor an academic he actually was (this version has cut out the ongoing references to how relieved the university are to have finally got rid of him*.) It takes a while to get warmed up but this Uncle Vanya ends up a rewarding one.

Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov in a version by Trevor Nunn is booking until the 13th of April at the Orange Tree Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.

*this does actually make for a marginally less bleak ending, as it removes all references to Serebryakov having lost that university income, and by the end the possibility of the land being sold has been taken off the table as they can just go back to the unequal arrangement they had before. It does mean Vanya and Sonya go back to having nothing so that her father can have the life he's accustomed to, with the added knowledge that it contributes nothing to the grand scheme of things, but actually that's only the case as long as Serebryakov is alive.