Uncle Vanya

Well I nearly fell of my 4x4. This film version of the stage play Uncle Vanya was rather good.

It starts off slowly and like a lot of Chekhov plays, there are people talking about their existence in rural Russia.

It heats up when Professor Serebryakov (Roger Allam) decides he wants to sell the estate even though it actually belongs to his daughter from his first marriage.

This incident causes Vanya (Toby Jones) to explode with rage.

Allam makes Serebryakov an aloof selfish know it all. I wonder if he realised how close he was to lose his much younger second wife Yelena (Rosalind Eleazar) to the visiting Doctor Astrov (Richard Armitage.)

Good performances from Aimee Lou Wood. She plays young Sonya who with Uncle Vanya toils the estate so her father can have good standard of living in the city. She also has the hots for Dotoe Astrov but he prefers Sonya's stepmother.

Toby Jones comes to his own when he rages about his existence and what could had been in the later acts. With a brother in law like Professor Serebryakov. No wonder Vanya wanted to end it all.

A rare upside to the brutal COVID pandemic in 2020 was the thought to film and release this otherwise stage-only version of Uncle Vanya. I wasn't at all familiar with Chekhov but I'm a huge fan of Toby Jones so thought I'd give it a whirl when the BBC put it on at Christmas - it was strange at first to see "a performance" filmed and felt like a throwback to 1970s television, slightly awkward, slightly staged. You get into it though and it adds a wild spontaneity to the more tense moments. The 1800s Russian play is obviously not at the height of cultural relevance but there are some startlingly existential beats here that feel timeless - not least the doctor's ideas of deforestation - but more perhaps the concept of the characters "carrying on regardless" like the actors have through plague, through political turmoil, onward and onward. The melancholy of their helplessness, trapped in situations not of their making is striking. "We shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us".

This is certainly one of the best renditions of Vanya you can find streaming. The performances and directing are just outstanding.

I am so pleased that this was filmed and shown in the US. While it is always my preference to be in the room for live theatre, there is no way I would have gotten to see this even if there hadn't been a global pandemic. I can't speak to whether it was a typical performance of Chekhov, but I very much enjoyed the acting (no surprise that Richard Armitage and Toby Jones were excellent and I learned a few new names to watch for).

Glad though I am to see this production, cut short this year by the pandemic, I was disappointed. It saddens me thinking of all London theatres still closed, and actors struggling but I cannot pretend to like a production because of the emotional pain it is causing people who love to see live theatre. My main quarrel with this version of the play is that there is nothing Russian about it. I do not mean having a Samovar on stage but something deeper. The British are often heavy with Chekhov, and this production for me falls into this trap. The actors do their best and if I have to pick out two who I thought achieved something of the ' feel ' of the environment it is supposed to take place in I was impressed by Richard Armitage and Anna Calder-Marshall. Their first scene together was tremendous, light and dark in their dialogue and in their gestures. After that I thought it slowly became more static, various different accents clashing which would not have been the case in the province in which these characters are trapped. I found the use of swear words irritating and added nothing to Chekhov's text. Of course in these past years we seem to think audiences need them. Also monologues said facing the camera and looking at us. Painful and too attention grabbing, when these are musings and almost private, and to be overheard and not stared at in the face. The third act sounded shouty and I switched off mentally. Where is the tragic farce in all this and the sad humour ? Chekhov is not Ibsen, but mood and vast spaces, not a claustrophobic ' Huis Clos '. I also do not think Toby Jones was right for the role, but that is perhaps unfair. The shooting scene was not as farcically dreadful as it should have been. Many will disagree with this, but it is certainly not for me the 5 star production many think it is. It should have been fiercely painful, and horror in the madness that farce can be. Toby Jones lowering his trousers at one point did not make up for the light touch sorely missed by this viewer. And the set and the clothes were an appalling mess and without any real sense of period or location. Chekhov's endings are perhaps the greatest ever written for the stage, and yes as always I was moved. Unity of vision at the end was achieved, and Aimee Woods gave a superlative final monologue, and was a cry of hope relevant today as it was in Chekhov's time.