It’s about depression, boredom, thwarted ambition and hopeless loves. And it’s one of the most popular plays in New York.
Indeed, not a year goes by without someone taking a stab at Chekhov’s 1899 masterpiece “Uncle Vanya.” We’ve seen it with stars like Maggie Gyllenhaal and Denis O’Hare at CSC and Emily Watson and Simon Russell Beale at BAM. A St. Petersburg company did it in the original Russian. Earlier this spring, Target Margin Theater put on a drastically deconstructed version. Next month, Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving will be “Vanya”-ing at the Lincoln Center Festival.
We’re near the saturation point, yet Soho Rep’s take seemed so mouth-watering, it was easy to make room for one more.
For starters, the show is helmed by Sam Gold, the It director of “Seminar,” “Look Back in Anger” and more. The cast features off-Broadway greats like Michael Shannon (“Bug,” TV’s “Boardwalk Empire”), Maria Dizzia (“In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play”) and Reed Birney (“Blasted,” “Tigers Be Still”).
Finally, the new adaptation is by rising playwright Annie Baker (“Circle Mirror Transformation,” “The Aliens”). It’s a good fit: Her own small-town underachievers aren’t that far off from Chekhov’s disappointed strivers and lonely dreamers — Vanya himself is all of that rolled into one desperate package.
Gold went for full immersion here. He reconfigured Soho Rep’s small space so it’s now in the round, with the audience seated on bleacher-like steps covered in industrial carpeting. Unless you’re a yoga fiend, prepare for a fidgety, uncomfortable night.
The cast is in casual modern dress — Birney’s slightly shabby Vanya wears beat-up New Balance sneakers — and sometimes inches away from the theatergoers. This closeness allows the actors to speak naturally, without being forced to project; during daytime scenes, the house lights stay on, reinforcing the sense of intimacy.
All this would seem to eliminate the gap between an audience fresh off the subway and the 19th-century Russians who people the show’s country estate: They are us, and we are them.
But Gold and company take this realism one step too far: Just because the characters are bored and depressed doesn’t mean we should be, too.
The punishingly slow pace and the monotonous, perpetually downbeat mood miss the satire and snuff out any potential sparks. These people look and sound anemic — you wish someone would just throw them a steak.
Occasionally, we get interesting insights. Dizzia’s Yelena is kinder than the usual aloof loafer. The scene in which Yelena and Sonya (Merritt Wever) discuss the latter’s bleak love life has an unexpectedly girlish warmth. You half-expect them to exchange friendship bracelets.
But too often, the characters come across as merely whiny or pathetic. It’s hard to muster compassion for any of them.
By the time the show eventually crawls to a halt, you’re more than ready to cry uncle.