Uncle Vanya

by Anton Chekhov (in a version by Conor McPherson)

seen at the Harold Pinter Theatre on 11 March 2020

Ian Rickson directs Toby Jones as Vanya, Richard Armitage as Doctor Astrov, Ciarán Hinds as the Professor, Aimee Lou Wood as Sonya, Anna Calder-Marshall as Nana, Rosalind Eleazer as Helena, Peter Wight as 'Waffles' Telegin and Dearbhla Molloy as Grandmaman in  production beautifully designed by Rae Smith - a ramshackle cavernous room taking up the entire stage space of the theatre, with the unadorned back wall and a massive supporting girder - and even safety notices on two of the doors - somehow not looking out of place in the dustladen gloom.

Though not exactly dressed in the late nineteenth century - Sonya and Grandmaman both weaer capacious pantaloons - the sense of a time at a loose end, with enervated overly intellectual but woefully underemployed men and frustrated women is marvellously rendered by the whole cast, from the Professor's overweening pomposity and self-regard, through Astrov's idealism battling with his despair, to Sonya's crushed hopefulness and Helena's bored and exasperated disillusionment with the choices she has made. Because every character is strongly delineated, it is impossible to miss the fact that none of the m really understands any of the others, sidetracked as each is by his or her own obsessions and frustrations. All this can lead to delightful sparks of social comedy as well as to heartbreaking intimations of loss, ennui and future blight.

Richard Armitage, with his commanding handsome presence and deep passionate voice, gives a fine portrayal of someone who must have been an energetic and idealistic young man now running to seed under the relentless pressure of thankless but overwhelming work. The Professor, by contrast, that much older, may once have been a charismatic presence, but it is all lost in encroaching age mixed with a self-indulgence verging on hypochondria; no wonder Rosalind Eleazer's Helena toys with the idea of a flirtation with the Doctor.

In the midst of this microcosm of social lethargy, with a neighbouring landowner reduced to total dependance on the estate's benevolence, an elderlynanny confused and irritted by the Professor's thoughtless disruption of the household's time-honoured routines, and the mother of the Professor's first wife devoted to his work and unmindful of her son and granddaughter, are these last two, Vanya and his niece Sonya. The girl is gawkish and hopelessly in love with the Doctor; Aimee Lou Wood handles this difficult role with great assurance, turning from awkwardness to steely determination with a surprising but entirely plausible ease whenever she recognises a practical necessity and forgets her private misery. Toby Jones's Vanya is a nervy, edgy dishevelled misfit, allowing us to see his absurdity and his pathos as inextricably linked, and his melodramatic outbursts as completely convincing releases of long-felt pain and oppression. 

In a play in which boredom cannot be boring, lack of self-awareness cannot be tedious, and idealism cannot be specious, or else the whole thing becomes dull, this production triumphantly overcomes the obstacles. The Doctor's speculations about people a hundred - or two hundred - years hence raised only a few uneasy chuckles, while his environmental concerns seemed eerily contemporary. Sonya's final speech of resolute determination and optimism, however much one may regard it as wishful thinking or overtly sentimental, was delivered with moving intensity and conviction, a muted close to the tempestuous summer the family had to endure.