Uncle Vanya.(Young Vic Theater, London) / (theater reviews) Author/s: Matt Wolf Issue: April 27, 1998 LONDON A Royal Shakespeare Co.-Young Vic co-production of the Chekhov drama in two acts by Anton Chekhov in a version by David Lan. Directed by Katie Mitchell. Sets and costumes, Vicki Mortimer; lighting, Paule Constable; sound, Steff Langley; fights, Nick Hall; music director, Richard Brown. Opened April 1, 1998. Reviewed April 11. Running time: 3 HOURS. Astrov Linus Roache Vanya Stephen Dillane Yelena Anastasia Hille Sonya Jo McInnes Serebryakov Malcolm Sinclair Mariya Cherry Morris Marina Antonin Pemberton Telegin Tom Bowles Farmhand Orlando Seale There's not a birch tree in sight in Vicki Mortimer's sparsely elegant design for the new Royal Shakespeare Co.-Young Vic co- production of "Uncle Vanya," but chances are you'll he too busy wiping away tears to give that telling absence a second thought. If too many evenings of Chekhov don't see the forest for the trees, director Katie Mitchell clears away every cliche, finding instead an unblinkered, devastating truth. This stellar production -- it's on a par with the remarkable Louis Malle-Wallace Shawn film "Vanya on 42nd Street" --sets a template for Chekhov as you wish he always came across and all too rarely does: It is alive to virtually every character's contradictions, which is to say that it is alive to life itself, and one's only lasting regret is that the production can't have a longer one. Certainly, it's hard to conceive a more urgent and playable edition than David Lan's new version, based on a literal translation by Helen Rappaport. Anyone wanting their Chekhov languid and idle should prepare for a jolt. In keeping with a company whose comparative youth reanimates in every sense a potentially languorous text, Lan reminds us that this playwright's apparently indolent people constitute so many restless and anxious souls. The intermission is preceded with the simple word "no," whose bluntness typifies the evening as a whole. Small wonder that Mitchell's choice of music is no melancholic and dreamy composition but Shostakovich and Gorecki -- jittery, fevered sounds for a household on the cusp of collapse. "This household is so unhappy," Yelena (Anastasia Hille) says twice, and by evening's end, nearly everyone has echoed her in some way. A straightforward assessment or the remarks of someone prone to the dramatic? In this production, the two are inseparable, as if to suggest that to stage your despair in no way minimizes the despair itself. There's an element of the theatrical to all the estate's inhabitants, beginning with a shambolic, bearded Vanya (Stephen Dillane) who caps his furious assault on his gout-plagued former brother-in-law Serebryakov (Malcolm Sinclair) with an explosively stated (and hilarious) "bang." The visiting doctor Astrov (Linus Roache) at one point speaks of "the play (being) over," though he, too, can put aside tendencies to self- aggrandizement and embrace real longing and hurt More than ever, one witnesses a labyrinth -- the house, indeed, is characterized as a maze -- of feeling mislaid and misunderstood, in which compassion and cantankerousness are never far apart Why else would Sonya (Jo McInnes) be referred to as an "orphan," when her father is there for all to see? In this "Vanya," a," miscommunication cuts so deep that such mistakes naturally arise: She's orphaned from the love any daughter has a right to expect even as she falls for the love of the doctor, Astrov, whose bedside manner is focused elsewhere. As Sonya, McInnes begins all briskness, every bit the hard-working country girl prepared for a day's chores. But she slows her stride as the play continues in accordance with the shifting rhythms of a community forever in flux. It's the central paradox of Chekhov that inertia should seem so active, and it does so doubly here, with each character staking a claim on our affections that alters as the next appeal is made. In Dillane's remarkable performance, this Vanya is no mere Nietzsche manque; he's an angry son and desperate suitor (no wonder he quotes Hamlet), and loving uncle, sometimes all at once. The exchanges with his mother (Cherry Morris) have an unusual edge, rancor rising up as quickly as tenderness later does with Sonya. But for all his talk of entombment, the Vanya we see has enough vigor to make his fury really matter. If Oprah were around, one can imagine him voicing an eloquent and highly media-friendly denunciation not just of provincial Russia but of himself. If self-knowledge is indeed a curse, he's the walking damned. Fellow stage-turned-film talent Roache ("The Wings of the Dove") stakes his own fresh claim on a potentially over-familiar (at least in Britain) part, presenting a droll suitor alert to everything -- vodka permitting -- except the one true love in his midst. For once, Astrov's eco-friendly argument has real passion. One understands his commitment to the cause no less fully than one sympathizes with Yelena's more personal campaign not to be thought vain. Emending somewhat Julianne Moore's approach in the Malle film, Hille makes an unusually proactive Yelena; in a different context and different time, this onetime musician might have made her own hoped-for mark instead of being the not always unwitting agent of so much amorous distress. At times, Mitchell's desire for intimacy softens proceedings too much: It's fine to feel as if one's intruding on conversation, but not if you can't bear it. But mostly the evening reverberates with the tug of affection and regret found in the opening scene between Astrov and the nanny (a lovely performance from Antonia Pemberton), whose God-filled language Sonya herself seems to have inherited by the end. This "Uncle Vanya" is nearly an hour longer than most stagings of this play, and yet it speeds by, taking with it an audience sensitized to life's ongoing ache for which this fearlessly modern play and production are any theater lover's balm. COPYRIGHT 1998 Cahners Publishing Company COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group