In this latest revival of the Chekhov classic, Hugh Fraser brings the minimalist contours of Louis Malle's 1994 film to the rickety boards of Wilton's Music Hall in London's East End. The critics are sharply divided over the production.
A sceptical reception from our own Michael Billington and The Stage's John Thaxter ("Wilton's Music Hall never quite transmutes from rehearsal informality to the ensemble intimacy of the movie") is countered by Sam Marlowe of The Times, who feels that, on the contrary, "The crumbling, draughty grandeur of Wilton's Music Hall in the East End of London makes a resonant setting ... it adds an eerie, elegiac texture". Nicholas de Jongh in The Evening Standard agrees that the hall makes "an ideal setting for Chekhov... It breathes an aura of dilapidation, decay and ghostly melancholia, thereby offering a suitable emotional correlative for the play's despairing mood".
Staging aside, the critics are unanimous in declaring that the evening's best performance comes from veteran Philip Voss as the Professor. Billington affirms that it is one of two strong performances "which alone make this revival worth catching", saying "Philip Voss's Professor is magnificent". De Jongh goes further, "Philip Voss's definitive Professor Serebryakov captures the forceful Chekhovian mood".
Colin Stanton's Vanya is universally less popular and by all accounts appears to be lacking something. De Jongh thinks he "looks too mature to be playing Vanya" and "maintains a misconceived air of placid calm" when he should be otherwise enraged. Marlowe labels him "ineffectual" and Billington feels that he "lacks the clownish absurdity" that his role demands.
Opinions about the women on stage differ drastically between critics; According to Marlowe it is the women, umanimously, who "carry the play's sense of despair", but Catherine Cussack's Sonya is considered less convincing by Billington and in fact "rather lesbian" by de Jongh.
Billington concludes that "there is little of the symphonic detail that is a vital part of Chekhov's genius" and that "in dispensing with [his] careful detail, this production is in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater". Despite lacking any typical Chekhovian idiosyncracies de Jongh sums the play up as "a flawed revival but a seductive one" which "still manages to cast a desolate, engrossing spell".
