David Mamet's stripped-down Chekhov adaptation inspired a famous film, Louis Malle's Vanya on 42nd Street. I suspect that Hugh Fraser, in this informal, bare-platform staging, is striving to achieve the same rehearsal-room revelation. However, the result, in spite of a couple of outstanding performances, seems theatrically undercooked.
Chekhov's play shows how the disruptive visit of the Professor and Yelena to the Serebryakov estate leads to tragic self-recognition: the most the residents can hope for is to get through their days with stoic endurance. In Fraser's revival, there is little of the symphonic detail that is a vital part of Chekhov's genius. In the first act, one misses any sense of afternoon sultriness. And Sonya's heart-rending speech, at the play's close, lacks any aural context: the sound of departing harness bells, the click of the abacus, the gentle strumming of a guitar, which Chekhov specifies, all offer a crucial counterpoint to the spiritual desolation.
Significantly, the two strong performances, which alone make this revival worth catching, come from the play's visitors. Philip Voss's Professor is magnificent: a tetchy, querulous old man who realises that academic distinction offers no protection against private pain. There is a sublime moment when Voss smugly urges the virtues of work on Vanya and Astrov, already crippled with fatigue. Meanwhile, Rachael Stirling perfectly embodies not just the flawless beauty of the Professor's wife, Yelena, but also her casual destructiveness, in a manner that fully justifies Mamet's description of Yelena as "morbid with laziness".
The production's minimalism has a draining effect on the other characters. There is little sense of the joshing familiarity between Colin Stinton's Vanya and Ronan Vibert's Astrov that derives from their educated isolation. While Stinton conveys Vanya's eruptive anger, he lacks the clownish absurdity of a man who twice tries to shoot the Professor and misses. Vibert, meanwhile, has Astrov's charm but none of his vanity: I always recall Olivier, before launching into his diatribe against the destruction of the forests, checking his hair in a mirror. Although not helped by the absence of sound effects, Catherine Cusack's Sonya also misses the element of bravado that makes the final speech overwhelming.
It remains a great play. But in dispensing with Chekhov's careful detail, this production is in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
