Uncle Vanya review at the Ensemble Theatre – MASHAHER

THEATRE
UNCLE VANYA
Ensemble Theatre, July 31
Until August 31
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★★★

Until now, an “adaptation” of a classic tended to be a synonym for a bastardisation. Usually translated from another language, these classics come to us more in the image of the adaptor than the originator: high art rendered low by inferior intellect and artistry.

Yet, it can work. Commissioned by Ensemble Theatre’s artistic director Mark Kilmurry, Joanna Murray-Smith’s adaptation of Uncle Vanya gives us pure Chekhov, just gently refocused through a prism of now, to bring us closer, probably, to the experience of an 1899 Moscow audience. She lets us in on the humour that hasn’t necessarily survived the intervening 125 years in direct translation. If many words are hers rather than Chekhov’s, the spirit of Chekhov is gloriously intact.

And how black-humoured that spirit is! It can be as dark as Beckett, with just a flicker of light at the end of life’s tunnel of gloom. According to Sonya, perhaps the least self-delusional character, we don’t reach that light until we die, which is grim consolation, although in her mind it’s sufficient justification for abiding the suffering.

Vanya, by contrast, in response to a remark about the pleasant weather early on, retorts, “A perfect day for hanging oneself”, and later steals Doctor Astrov’s morphine with a view to doing a quieter job.

I’ve never laughed at Uncle Vanya so much while still feeling Chekhov’s intended sympathy for all the characters. Yes, Sonya, Astrov and Nanny apart, they are foolish, petty, hypocritical, self-absorbed creatures, yearning for what they can’t have and deceiving others and themselves at every turn. Yet Chekhov’s point is they aren’t bad. They’re capable of giving and receiving love, being amused or amusing, and just possibly, like Astrov, of doing some good.

Receiving sympathy from each other is another matter. Much of the humour lies in the characters’ shrugging aside each other’s suffering to dramatise their own – like so many playwrights, with the other characters their puppets.

Kilmurry’s sharp casting has each actor amplifying the inner lives of these deeply flawed people. Yalin Ozucelik is such a wired Vanya that his manic attempt to shoot Serebryakov is not just hilarious but plausible. He speaks with no filter between brain and mouth and resents the hand that life has dealt him even more than does Yelena.