A great acting journey...but reaching the right destination?
Firs show this year for me at Richmond, to see Vanya, the second preview of a play due to open at the Duke of York’s Theatre on 15th September after a further period of West End Previews.
This is a re-write, for a single actor, by Simon Stephens, of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya – when I say the single actor is Andrew Scott you will realise why the theatre is sold out!
Scott plays all the parts, ‘apparently’ does the lights and sound and shifts the set – which is taking a one-man-play a little too far.
[The set is stark, modern and may well not be the final set when the play launches, at least I hope so.]
This is an unbroken hour and 50 minutes of tour-de-force acting, although after the first 20 minutes where each character has a clear voice and tone and mannerisms the characters do begin to blur, and through the middle of the play too many scenes play on the same note, which can confuse (and tire) the audience.
What is mainly missing from the play, however, is Uncle Vanya himself as a comic foil to everyone. And hence also missing are the sparky inter-plays between him and the family matriarch (and indeed him and everyone else!). The Character is there, but not the character.
Vanya isn’t, really, central to the man apparent plot line (the crossed lovers) – but in many ways that plot line is a McGuffin on which to hang Chekhov’s commentary on the collapse of the gentry and rentiers in fin-de-siecle Russia.
Dropping Vanya isn’t quite the same as dropping Macbeth’s Porter. His lines are still funny!
This does not particularly detract from Scott’s dramatic expertise (although when he (as two characters) makes physical love to himself, at one point, you do feel he is putting his heart too much into it). But the play, itself, without Uncle Vanya and Chekhov’s social and political viewpoint is hollow at its core, despite the closing homilies, or the acting excellence.
This was a great acting challenge, but was it really worth rising to it?
It was an astonishing performance by Scott. I am not familiar with the play so I don't understand Julian's comment that the play was "without Uncle Vanya", I thought it was one of the many characters Scott portrayed.
The filmed version meant that we had a very closeup view of Scott's many expressions representing the different characters. I certainty got lost identifying which character he was playing at a particular time but Julie wasn't. It was certainly hard work, no doubt easier if one was familiar with the play.
Scott righty got a standing ovation from the theatre audience on the film.
He actually isn't called Vanya as such in this version, and the interplay with the (missing) matriarch - which would have been I think unplayable in a one man version - does I think define the Vanya character as an outsider still within his family, the only one to challenge what the family is. I think without that the Vanya character is somewhat diminished. In the other versions I've seen that interplay is character defining. Vanya as a dilletante and part wastral (and nascent revolutionary) is partly defined through this interplay. Scott's performance even in the preview stage I saw was extraordinary as a performance, well deserving standing applause, but it's not the best Vanya I've seen as a whole.