Berkeley — It’s astonishing what a great director can do. One of the best amongst them can flip the disparate parts of theater into one thing seamlessly complete.
Simon Godwin, creative director of Shakespeare Theatre Firm in Washington, D.C., pulls off this feat in “Uncle Vanya,” a manufacturing at Berkeley Repertory Theatre that has one foot within the twenty first century and one other on the flip of the twentieth.
Irish playwright Conor McPherson has tailored Anton Chekhov’s 1897 drama, and the result’s a conversational English model with none of the starchiness that attaches to the extra self-consciously “classical” translations. McPherson takes liberties, setting the play in 1900 central Ukraine and, maybe extra consequently, elucidating the psychology the place Chekhov was a tad extra ambiguous. He additionally provides these Chekhovian wobblers extra backbone whereas curbing a number of the excesses that threaten to show character into caricature.
Godwin’s very good firm, led by Hugh Bonneville (“Downton Abbey”) within the title position, easily delivers the dialogue as if it have been one among McPherson’s unique performs. There isn’t even any awkwardness concerning the conflict of accents.
At one level, Melanie Subject, who performs Sonya, mocks the plummy British sound of Bonneville’s Vanya. For a quick second, the fourth wall of Godwin’s manufacturing is breached. However this momentary interruption within the regular order hardly issues as a result of the ensemble is so comfortably aligned within the theatrical universe that Godwin has created.
The staging has an aesthetic unity that’s helped alongside by the ethereal, swish scenic design of Robert Brill and the pastiche costumes of Susan Hilferty and Heather C. Freedman that steadiness the play’s period and our personal. Cellist Kina Kantor, an ensemble member who shadows the motion, supplies musical accompaniment that lends the human comedy an indeniable gravity.
The liberty of this “Uncle Vanya,” a co-production between Berkeley Rep (the place it runs by way of Sunday) and Shakespeare Theatre Firm (the place it runs from March 30 by way of April 20), refreshes the play. In contrast to final season’s Lincoln Middle Theater revival, directed by Lila Neugebauer, this manufacturing has a stylistic sure-footedness. All of the actors are on the identical web page, equally at dwelling with Chekhov’s realism and buoyant theatricality.
The success Godwin has had with Shakespeare — he directed a muscular “Macbeth” final 12 months starring Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma — is clear within the agility of his strategy right here. One of many errors administrators make is assuming that Chekhov’s performs provide a naturalistic slice of life. Chekhov bares the inside lives of his characters. No playwright of the trendy period has extra compassionately — or precisely — dramatized the human consciousness of time, loss and the hole between hope and actuality. However the performs are rigorously composed artistic endeavors, availing themselves of a theatrical vocabulary that extends past photographic realism.
“Uncle Vanya,” briefly, isn’t a tv drama, a lot as modern actors educated for the digicam may barrel ahead in a mumbling Netflix style. Godwin attends to the spatial patterns of the play, the motion of character throughout the stage in clear formal patterns that may recommend a dance piece titled “Exits and Entrances” have been Chekhov’s creative hand not so discreet.
Ito Aghayere as Yelena, left, and Melanie Subject as Sonya in “Uncle Vanya” at Berkeley Rep.
(Kevin Berne)
But it surely’s the characterizations that distinguish this manufacturing. Bonneville, resembling a canceled journalist wallowing in sarcasm with a bottle of booze, lends Vanya a flailing, self-deprecating levity. Vanya doesn’t want anybody to inform him that he’s a miscast romantic, too goofy to have his heartbreak taken significantly. It’s a credit score to Bonneville’s efficiency that we really feel the character’s disappointment in love and in life all of the extra acutely.
The item of Vanya’s mad infatuation is Yelena (Ito Aghayere), the a lot youthful spouse of the retired professor, Alexandre (Tom Nelis), who was married to Vanya’s late sister. Alexandre and Yelena’s arrival on the nation property managed by Vanya and Sonya, the professor’s put-upon daughter, has thrown the family into chaos.
Vanya can assume solely of Yelena whereas Sonya is within the throes of affection for Ástrov (John Benjamin Hickey), who has turn into smitten with Yelena whereas attending to the hypochondriac professor and ingesting along with his previous buddy Vanya. Aghayere’s distinctive Yelena is an excessive amount of a annoyed human being to come back throughout, as she typically does in revivals, as an aloof siren. Her dissatisfaction together with her crabby previous husband drives her into the identical state of amorous turmoil that Vanya and Sonya discover themselves in.
Nice magnificence seems to be no protection in opposition to the longings of the guts. Aghayere’s Yelena represents an evolution of Chekhov’s character. It’s no marvel that, as she performs the piano regardless of her husband’s demand for silence (a McPherson twist ), everybody falls underneath the spell of her seductive defiance.
Subject’s somber, clear-eyed Sonya has ardent wishes however few illusions. If it weren’t for Yelena’s meddling, she’d let the dream of a life with Ástrov go her by with no murmur. The sorrow she feels is crushing however not new to her. Subject’s Sonya seems as if she has been holding again tears ever since her mom died. Her stoicism is all of the extra ennobling, given how a lot it prices her.
John Benjamin Hickey as Ástrov, left, and Hugh Bonneville as Vanya in “Uncle Vanya.”
(Kevin Berne)
Hickey by no means loses sight of the physician’s twin nature. The idealism that makes Ástrov so interesting — he’s a passionate environmentalist and a medical humanitarian — doesn’t negate the informal self-destruction and dismissive carelessness that lead him to guzzle vodka and ignore the tumult his visits engender.
Nelis renders the professor a pompous and pedantic twit however not a heartless one. He isn’t allowed to turn into the play’s villain regardless of his egocentric plan to promote the property out from underneath his household. Sharon Lockwood’s Maríya, Vanya’s mom, is equally endowed with redeeming qualities. She nonetheless drives her son insane with the best way she worships the professor, however she’s not as infuriatingly unreasonable as Chekhov permits her to be.
McPherson extends Chekhov’s soulful generosity all through the solid. Craig Wallace’s Telégin, referred to as “Waffles” for his pockmarked pores and skin, is an amiable fumbler but suffused with kindness and possessing an implacable decency. Nancy Robinette as Marína, the aged nanny who comforts these she has lengthy served with maternal acceptance, maintains the lengthy view in a family caught up in short-term squabbles.
The ending of “Uncle Vanya,” a theatrical oil portray of human endurance, is exquisitely executed. As Bonneville’s Vanya and Subject’s Sonya take shelter from the devastation of their goals within the day by day grind of their work, a picture of life as it’s authentically skilled is renewed onstage. Chekhov could not falsely console, however he dignifies the human battle in a secular parable that lives once more by way of the magic of ensemble brio and a director on the prime of his recreation.
