Lila Neugebauer’s laugh-filled, all-star revival of Anton Chekhov’s classic Uncle Vanya, at Lincoln Center’s cavernous Vivian Beaumont Theater, removes the play from its original setting of the pre-Revolutionary Russian countryside and places it in a non-specific, presumably American 2024. (Mimi Lein’s set appears to be somewhere in the rural heartland. The characters play jazz on a turntable. Costume designer Kaye Voyce has clothed them in casual modern dress. We hear the sound effects of automobiles offstage after they exit.) With a contemporary, idiomatic adaptation by Heidi Schreck, this production stresses Chekhov’s universal themes of despair and alienation and their comic aspects. Yes, the master playwright saw the humor in the drab and everyday. This approach largely succeeds. The melancholy characters laugh at themselves heartily to stop from constantly weeping. Too many Chekhov productions make the mistake of playing bored people in a boring way. Not here, thank goodness.
Steve Carrell, known mostly for his comic performances in such hit films as “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Crazy Stupid Love,” makes his Broadway debut as the title character, a frustrated intellectual who feels trapped by his circumstances. He forgoes his vague artistic ambitions to slave away managing his family’s estate. Carrell captures Vanya’s depression without drowning in it. He mines the humor and absurdity in Vanya’s self-created hell. William Jackson Harper is equally shaded and complex as Vanya’s best friend Dr. Astrov. Both lonely men are in love with the siren-like Elena (an alluring and sensitive Anika Noni Rose), the much younger second wife of Vanya’s pompous brother-in-law, the retired academic Alexander.
With the casting of the attractive and vital Alfred Molina as Alexander, for once, Elena’s marriage makes sense. This self-important pontificator is usually played as a decrepit old man, but here you can see Elena’s attraction to him and why she stays with him. Molina is very funny as a complaining crank, but you can see the remnants of the charismatic qualities that drew Elena and his first wife, Vanya’s late sister, to him.
Meanwhile, Alexander’s daughter, Sonia (a moving Alison Pill) is pining with unrequited love for Astrov. Interestingly, Neugebauer and Schreck have added another layer of romantic subtext, transforming a one-line walk-on role of Neighbor into a silent, unacknowledged suitor for Sonia. Spencer Donovan Jones makes the most of this cameo role, conveying a quiet longing for Sonia in his few moments on stage. Jayne Houdyshell is a more sympathetic Maria, Vanya’s judgmental mother, than usual. Mia Katigbak is properly maternal as the reliable family nurse, and Jonathan Hadary is a gentle and loving Waffles, the pathetic tenant and family friend who still supports his unfaithful wife though she left him on their wedding day.
There were some problems with the modern setting. When Vanya pleads with Astrov to “give me something” to relieve his despair, Chehkov’s script demands that the doctor reply he has nothing to offer his friend except advice to buck up and bear his misery. Since it seems we’re in contemporary times, the doctor should be able to prescribe anti-depressants or at least recommend a therapist. But then a well-adjusted Uncle Vanya would not be Chekhov’s character and it would not be his play. There are also some odd directorial choices such as having a rainstorm in what seems to be indoors. But these are minor quibbles in an otherwise heartbreaking and moving production.
