Vanya on 42nd Street

In the late 80s New York theatre director Andre Gregory spent several years staging, in ad-hoc spaces, but with top-notch actors, a new version of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya”, scripted by David Mamet (famed playwright and director of State and Main, The Winslow Boy, The Spanish Prisoner). Intrigued by the processes, director Louis Malle (in what was to be his last film) decided to film the actors at rehearsal in a dilapidated theatre. As played by Wallace Shawn, the titular Vanya is an embittered keeper of a rural Russian estate; owned by the vaunted husband of his late sister, Serybryakov is an intellectual who arrives with his young, alluring wife, Yelena; this causes the protagonists, including Serybryakov’s plain, lovelorn daughter, Sonya, and the idealistic Dr Astrov, to evaluate the meaning of their lives. The results of this set-up are a powerful rendition of “Vanya”, boasting fine performances; the parred back setting allows for an accentuation on the language and cadence of the Mamet’s text, placing an emphasis on the themes that dominate “Vanya” - regret, loneliness, thwarted love and anguish. But the lines between ‘reality’ and ‘the play’ are not sufficiently blurred (as suggested by several enraptured reviewers) to produce truly revelatory moments pertaining to life and art. What does remain however is an engrossing two hours of Chekhov. Cast includes: Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore, Larry Pine, Brooke Smith, Lynn Cohen, Phoebe Brand, Madhur Jaffrey and George Gaynes.