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Uncle Vanya, Grand Guignol and They Only Come at Night | Theatre reviews

Source: The Guardian

Nov 08, 2009

Summary

Bristol Old Vic
Drum, Plymouth
Barbican, London

Vanya snarls. Serebryakov is querulous. Sonya snaps. And Yelena throws her sullenness around the stage as if it were a discarded frock. The keynote in Andrew Hilton's incisive production of Uncle Vanya is anger. The decorative languor – muffled sighs over the samovar – once thought to be the default position for a Chekhov play is banished here. The family and guests trapped on a rotting estate are going mad. With more than six degrees of irritation.

Hilton may have attended to an excellent note by the dramatist to his future wife, Olga Knipper: he advised her when appearing in Three Sisters that she show her long-standing, pent-up grief not by looking mournful but by being cross. Disappointment is never elegant here. Simon Armstrong's Vanya is so bunched up with anger that it's not much of a shock when he pulls out a gun: it's more surprising that he hasn't long ago machine-gunned his companions.

This must be one of the most confrontational Chekhov productions ever staged. Characters have the sweetness winnowed out

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