Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya

Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya
Adaptation: Joanna Murray-Smith
Director: Mark Kilmurry
Ensemble, Kirribilli
July 29 – August 31, 2024

Fear not those theatregoers who love Chekhov and for whom Uncle Vanya is their favourite play. Joanna Murray-Smith’s adaptation maintains the Chekhovian melancholy – the sense of life passing without being lived – and comedy generated by human zaniness. It happens that the production seems particularly relevant to our own moment in which many are dissatisfied with the increasing power of the privileged but either feel powerless to change society’s direction or can’t conceive of an alternative.

The setting – designed by Nick Fay – a decaying rural estate, while aptly realised in the broken spring of a velvet topped stool, seems cosy initially. Bird song, wood smoke, panelled interior and a samovar on the table, but something is awry. The intrusion of the Serebryakovs into this worn-out country house has disturbed the routine as all now centres around the timetable of the distinguished and now retired Professor Serebryakov (David Lynch) who thinks nothing of waking poor Nanny (a delightful Vanessa Downing) at 1am for a glass of tea.

His beautiful young second wife Yelena (Chantelle Jamieson), however, is the real threat as she awakens long-repressed desire for a different quality of life in the hearts of the estate’s present inhabitants. A well-cast Jamieson, Yelena provokes them to protest the boredom of their existence and to remember a former self who either was, or imagined having been happier, more promising.

Serebyrakov’s daughter Sonya (Abbey Morgan) and Vanya (Yalin Ozucelik), his brother-in-law, work as they say “tirelessly” to support the urban lifestyle of the Serebryakovs who monopolise the estate’s income. The household numbers are increased by Serebrykov’s mother (also Vanessa Downing), a dependent, “Waffles” (an endearing John Gaden AO), their former Nanny, and from time to time by a country doctor, Astrov.

Once a reference is made to “peasants outside” in a querulous tone by Nanny so that we realise there are degrees of privilege, and that “the work” that Uncle Vanya and Sonya do together is balancing the books. Only the brooding Astrov, a well-cast Tim Walter, has an interest in conserving the natural environment, but others regard his passion as an eccentricity, and he has allowed his idealism to be dissipated by vodka.

The mercurial Uncle Vanya, and a truly engaging performance by Ozucelik, exemplifies the curious restlessness but ineptness that seems to infect most of the characters. Preoccupied with what he might have been, dissatisfied by the present but incapable of changing his situation, he complains and blames, he’s confused and disorganised, but Walter makes it difficult not to respond to Vanya’s struggle for more out of life. And difficult not to respond to the modest Sonya, sensitively portrayed by Morgan, who models so poignantly the lost happiness vehemently claimed and blamed by the aging characters. The crumbling estate, after all, belongs to her. Is renewal possible?

Joanna Murray-Smith’s modernisation of the language and the faster pace of the play worked well if the palpable satisfaction of the audience is deemed an effective measure of success.