WASHINGTON, DC — The word “slapstick” isn’t often used in conjunction with Chekhov. And yet here’s the imperious Cate Blanchett, nearly tumbling down as the door against which she was striking a dramatic pose suddenly opens.
The Sydney Theater Company’s “Uncle Vanya” — currently playing an exclusive US engagement at the Kennedy Center in DC — is full of similar antics. They’re unexpected, but also make the show’s very real pathos stand out even more.
The Russian playwright is best-known for characters half-paralyzed by longing and ambivalence. This doesn’t usually lead to pratfalls, but Hungarian director Tamás Ascher — whose brilliant production of Chekhov’s “Ivanov” was at Lincoln Center Festival 2009 — understands that depressive introspection can sometimes make people look and act ridiculous.
Granted, the humor can feel forced, especially if you add Andrew Upton’s very colloquial adaptation. But the mood can turn on a dime, and eventually you are touched by the people gathered onstage, with their comic stumbles and desperate unhappiness.
Ascher has set the play in the mid-20th century, on a rough, utilitarian estate infested by pesky flies. It’s run by Vanya (Richard Roxburgh) and his niece, Sonya (Hayley McElhinney), while the old nanny, Marina (Jacki Weaver, an Oscar nominee for “Animal Kingdom”), provides feeble, semimaternal support.
The local physician, Astrov (Hugo Weaving, currently on multiplex screens as the villain in “Captain America”), occasionally drops by for a drink and conversation, providing a break from the grind.
This routine is disrupted by a visit from Sonya’s father, the blowhard academic Serebryakov (John Bell), and his hot second wife, Yelena (Blanchett). Vanya and Astrov are in love with Yelena, while Sonya pines for the doctor.
But while both resentments and affections are revealed, not much will have changed by the play’s end.
It’s hard to make an audience root for such ineffectual malcontents — some may even say losers. But Ascher and his cast find unexpected entries into the characters.
Bored and married to an uppity boor, Yelena is surprisingly sympathetic. Astrov calls her a “delicious predator,” but she’s more of a hapless prisoner of her own beauty. Blanchett’s attention-grabbing mannerisms serve her well here: This Yelena is a star in search of a movie.
Meanwhile, Roxburgh and Weaving are superbly beaten down, finding dignity in frustration for Roxburgh, melancholy for Weaving. You’d be hard-pressed to find more affecting misery.
elisabeth.vincentelli
@nypost.com