Review of Loft Theatre Company production of Uncle Vanya (2013)

This is not a 3D production. It is not all about Discontent, Disillusion and Despair.

Well, it is, actually. Chekhov the playwright majors in all three, but they are far from being the sole essence of his masterly work. Vanya is probably his purest example of how irony, wit and occasional outright comedy can be applied not to dilute these themes but to illustrate them to the most poignant and at the same time entertaining effect.

In this way we can recognise it as a template for the humours of Ayckbourn, who did his own adaptation, Coward and even Joe Orton. The tragi-comic element underpins the play and much of it is captured in William Wilkinson’s stately production, despite a degree of unevenness between the two acts.

Although the performances can hardly be faulted, the first half lacks the movement and sparkle which so enliven the second. This can partly be put down to the slow-burn development of what are subsequently exploding emotions, but at times it seems too reverential. Not so once the whining eternal underdog Vanya blows his top, giving vent to the pent-up frustrations of years of servitude. Tim Willis, capering round the stage like a demented Norman Wisdom, cleverly commands our sympathy at the expense of our exasperation at the character’s maudlin self-pity. ‘Look at the luck he’s had with women,’ he rants of his elderly wealthy brother-in-law.

We can now also savour the production’s best scene, a two-hander scintillatingly played by Zoë Faithfull and James Wolstenholme in which the vagaries of unrequited love are deliciously realised over and above the doctor’s comic obsession with forestry and the married woman’s romantic quest on behalf of another.

The play’s almost imperceptible shifts of mood are reflected across the board as Chloe Orrock’s appealing Sonya philosophically faces the fact that life is just one big plain compromise and Michael Rayns’s guitar-playing landowner friend learns the importance of keeping a low profile when the family samovar begins to overheat.

There is much to be enjoyed in this stylish adaptation, but Sonya’s endlessly repetitive final speech needs to be severely pruned.

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Peter McGarry is an experienced, independent professional theatre critic who has agreed to review Loft Theatre Company productions.

The agreement with the Loft is that Peter is free to express his opinions for good or ill. The Loft Theatre Company has no control whatsoever over the content of these reviews and will never comment publicly on what he writes.