Das ist die zweite Review bei der man sich das in Relation zum Text ernsthaft fragt. Weil sie einfach keine 1,0 5 Sterne geben. Basta! Zumindest nicht, wenn Humor mit im Spiel ist und nicht nur bleischwere Sozialkritik.

Prinzipiell besteht aber keinerlei Grund sich über die Reviews zu beschweren.

January 24, 2020 9:35AM PT

‘Uncle Vanya’: Theater Review

Conor McPherson meets Uncle Vanya but misses the mark.

By David Benedict


With:
Toby Jones, Richard Armitage, Anna Calder Marshall, Rosalind Eleazar, Ciaran Hinds, Dearbhla Molloy, Peter Wight, Aimee Lou Wood.

2 hours 30 minutes

Director Ian Rickson has had success with Chekhov in the past. His exquisitely balanced, tragicomic production of “The Seagull” (2007 in London, 2008 on Broadway) was well-nigh flawless with, among others, Kristin Scott Thomas as painfully vulnerable as she was startlingly funny. Sadly, with his production of “Uncle Vanya,” despite felicities in the casting, lightning has not struck twice.

The physical production could not be bettered. Bruno Poet doesn’t so much light Rae Smith’s wonderfully suggestive, wood-toned, high-vaulted indoor-outdoor set — part conservatory, part-study — as ignite it. The intensity of his steeply angled light so floods the stage and irradiates the characters caught between indolence and industry that it makes you want to move in.

With the autumnal tone so securely established, the evening hums with promise, not least when Rickson wins a hugely welcome early laugh by interrupting the opening intimate exchange between Astrov (Richard Armitage) and Nana (Anna Calder-Marshall) with the sudden appearance of Toby Jones’ excellent Vanya, who leaps into the scene having been hidden asleep in a chair.

Problems surface, however, with the text. Every writer/translator interpreting Chekhov adds, to a greater or lesser degree, their own voice. Working from a literal translation by Helen Rappaport, Conor McPherson has provided what he describes as an adaptation, but it’s more than usually “adapted.”

On the plus side, McPherson loses almost all of the archaisms of the language of this 1898 play and gently makes it sound more contemporary. There are slang expressions like “wanging on” and a single furious “f–k”, none of which are in the least obtrusive due to the easeful playing and feel of Rickson’s production. And McPherson’s much-expressed interest in the effects of alcohol resurface again here.

McPherson’s most interventionist work in his otherwise stripped-back text is the adding of monologues in which characters face front and tell us their thoughts and feelings. But such explanatory speeches only serve to underline the fact that too much self-knowledge by a character is dangerously undramatic.

At the risk of being labelled a purist, it is also bizarrely un-Chekhovian. The greatness of Chekhov lies chiefly in his controlled understatement. His characters almost never say what they mean, allowing us instead to sense and feel their thoughts and desires. He deals in show, rather than tell. By having characters explain themselves and their motives, scenes are leeched of texture and tension, and audiences are robbed of the pleasure of gleaning what lies beneath.

Take the character of the elderly professor’s beautiful young wife Yelena. It is hard to take your eyes off an actress as fine as Rosalind Eleazar, the unobtrusive standout in the recent London production of Kenneth Lonergan’s “The Starry Messenger.” Beneath her poised surface she switches fascinatingly between ennui and suppressed erotic tension. She handles her over-explanatory speech with exemplary detail, but her performance is already so complete, not a word of it is needed.

She’s matched by Jones’ restless, witheringly sarcastic Vanya, ricocheting between indolence and frustration at his arrogant and unusually bullish brother-in-law (Ciaran Hinds). Jones’s emotional precision means he’s alive to — and enlivens — every beat of the text, but not everyone is on his level.

The rest of the cast winningly create the sense of a longstanding household, but until his pain-filled climactic kiss with Yelena, Armitage is too generalized a love interest as Astrov, while the oddly young Aimee Lou Wood is miscast as Sonia. Rickson stages a misplaced kiss between her and Astrov with moving precision, but the numerous lines about her character being physically unattractive land oddly because Wood never seems so. Instead, she overplays her hand by being too obviously gauche.

Outside of Eleazar and Jones’s performances, the heartbreak in Chekhov’s writing is indicated rather than fully realized. Judged by Rickson own past record, this only intermittently touching and funny production is a disappointment.

'Uncle Vanya': Theater Review

Harold Pinter Theatre, London, 796 seats £85 top ($111). Opened, reviewed Jan. 24, 2020. Closes May 2. Running time: 2 HOURS, 30 MIN.

Production: A Sonia Friedman Productions, Gavin Kalin Productions, Rupert Gavin/Mallory Factor, Patrick Gracey/Scott M. Delman, 1001 nights Productions, Eilene Davidson productions, Tulchin Bartner Productions in association with Len Blavatnik, Louise & Brad Egerton presentation of a play in two acts by Anton Chekhov in a new adaptation by Conor McPherson.

Creative: Directed by Ian Rickson. Sets and costumes, Rae Smith; lighting, Bruno Poet; sound, Ian Dickinson; music, Stephen Warbeck; production stage manager Graham Michael.

Cast: Toby Jones, Richard Armitage, Anna Calder Marshall, Rosalind Eleazar, Ciaran Hinds, Dearbhla Molloy, Peter Wight, Aimee Lou Wood.

Posted on January 24, 2020 by Ian

Review: Uncle Vanya, Harold Pinter Theatre

Conor McPherson’s adaptation of Uncle Vanya featuring Toby Jones and Richard Armitage at the Harold Pinter Theatre is so good you can forgive the “wanging on”

“I mean what I mean when I say what I say”

Above everything, the thing that stands out most about Conor McPherson’s adaptation of Chekhov’s evergreen Uncle Vanya is his use of the phrase “wanging on”, twice. It’s such a random thing but it rings out like a bell, both times, more so than any of the usages of contemporary language that pepper the script. Running it a close second though, is just how vital and vibrant Ian Rickson’s production proves.

From stacking his cast with real, proper talent (imagine your bit players being of the ilk of Anna Calder-Marshall, Peter Wight and Dearbhla Molloy) to reuniting with Rosmersholm designer Rae Smith, this is a finely tuned piece of theatre which ultimately, doesn’t do too much that is radical (though the fourth wall breaking-bits are smashing), but rather distils its Chekhovian spirit just so. Or maybe that it’s the first production of the play I’ve seen since turning 40 and its midlife crises suddenly have new resonance…!

Toby Jones excels as the rumpled Vanya, caught in a moment of existential realisation when the rug is pulled from under his rather cushy situation, (barely) looking after the family estate. Downcast without ever being too desperate, his is a deeply empathetic portrayal that connects beautifully with those around him. Aimee Lou Wood’s youthfully lovelorn Sonya, Rosalind Eleazar’s passionate Yelena, Ciarán Hinds’ irascible Serebryakov.

Just as impressive though is Richard Armitage’s Astrov, his environmental concerns eerily prescient in this time of climate crisis, so too his slightly warped romanticism as he clodhops over the romantic allusions of the women around him. Throw in Bruno Poet’s hauntingly effective lighting, shadows creeping up the huge walls of Smith’s decrepit walls with the forest beginning to reclaim its land, and the result is a triumphant tragicomedy.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes (with interval)
Uncle Vanya is booking at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 2nd May
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Was ist eigentlich "too generalised a love interest"? Kann mir das mal jemand übersetzen? #schwurbel

THEATRE
Quentin Letts
Theatre review: Uncle Vanya, Harold Pinter Theatre; Les Misérables, Sondheim Theatre
Stealthy women stop this Uncle Vanya from getting too larky

Bringing out the humanity: Aimee Lou Wood as Sonya
Bringing out the humanity: Aimee Lou Wood as Sonya
JOHAN PERSSON
The Sunday Times, January 26 2020, 12:01am
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THIS WEEK’S THEATRE
Uncle Vanya
Harold Pinter Theatre, London SW1
★★★
Les Misérables
Sondheim Theatre, London W1 ★★★★
Young Aimee Lou Wood, not long out of Rada, pretty much steals the show in Ian Rickson’s watchable but flawed Uncle Vanya. Wood plays Sonya, the self-doubting daughter in Chekhov’s household of failures. She is up against quite a cast: Toby Jones, Anna Calder-Marshall, Dearbhla Molloy, Peter Wight, Ciaran Hinds. Yet it is Wood and Rosalind Eleazar (playing Yelena) who bring out the humanity of the story. Without them, it would be another Sonia Friedman production where gimmickry obscures dramatic truth.

Conor McPherson has written a demotic adaptation emphasising the comedy. Elderly Professor Serebryakov and his sultry new wife, Yelena, have moved out of the city to live in this crumbling country pile that belonged to the prof’s late wife. The house is also home, as it has been for decades, to in-laws and hangers-on. Vanya, 47, has run the place without success.

The curtain rises, and what a spectacle we have: a vast-ceilinged room, untidy, invaded by trees, bookshelves collapsing, a mirror speckled and dusty. Rickson, directing, has signalled his intention. Realism has not quite been thrown out of the broken windows, but it is going to be subservient to exaggeration.

Jones is a naturally comical actor and duly milks the title role for laughs. This Vanya is a boozy little bantam, dissolute, hair askew, Tintin after an almighty bender. He is sarcastic, lazy, grotesque. It is entertaining to watch, but there is a danger of it becoming shallow. If Vanya is played more subtly, he can be a more tragic figure. Accents have been abandoned. We are, thank goodness, spared the Russian rasping that cornier productions use, but there is no attempt to use accents to indicate class. Hinds, as Serebryakov, mutters in an indistinct brogue. The others are a jumble, from Queen’s English to something Lancastrian.

We lose any idea of the twilight of tsarist Russia, whose decline can make Chekhov so powerful. Presumably to accentuate the modernity, two doorways have been left with their emergency-exit signs. There is also an ill-judged moment when one of the characters starts blowing raspberries.


The arrival of Eleazar’s smouldering Yelena stops it becoming the Toby Jones show. She gives a terrific, earthy performance. Then we have Wood as Sonya, all overbite and doleful gawping at handsome Astrov (Richard Armitage). What a fool Astrov is to reject this young woman. Both Wood and Eleazar allow their characters to develop slowly: that stealth is essential to make sense of Sonya’s beautiful epilogue about the reversion of routine and mankind’s acceptance of fate.

Cameron Mackintosh, having spent a packet restoring the Queen’s, has renamed it the Sondheim Theatre, and jolly sumptuous it is, too. He has shrewdly opened it not with one of Sondheim’s plinkety-plonk tooth-grinders, but with a revival of Boublil and Schönberg’s box-office cert Les Misérables. This is the touring version, relieved of its Trevor Nunn revolve, but still with the swirling red flag, the artisan drinking vessels and the barricades to convey Victor Hugo’s tale of 19th-century Paris. Revolution is in the air. Let heroic sacrifice be the route to personal redemption! Chests heave and orchestral strings soar as Jean Valjean, sometime pilferer, finally squares his conscience.

Jon Robyns is the business as Valjean, operatically dashing, miraculous in the high notes. The student revolutionaries are a sort of Brideshead Revisited militia, all peachy cheeks and striding idealism. There is no shortage of dry-iced, spotlit solos when characters feel a noble moment coming on and strike a silhouette. Hammy but heavenly. I loved Shan Ako as the doomed Eponine. Ian Hughes and Josefina Gabrielle provide comic relief as the untrustworthy innkeeper and his wife. An excellent band give a creamy account of the celebrated score. Magnifique.

Gestern hat sich ein gewisser Quentin Letts noch zum Stück ausgelassen und 3 Sterne vergeben für die Sunday Times. Wie kam Herr Letts eigentlich von der Daily Mail zur Sunday Times?

Entschuldigung, dass ich meine Ironie nicht verbergen kann, aber Herr Letts fiel vor 6 Jahren schon auf mit seiner (der einzigen) mehr als mäßigen Crucible-Kritik - er war und ist definitiv kein Freund Richards, würde ich sagen... Worauf der aber vermutlich auch gut und gerne verzichten kann.