Uncle Vanya
I have measured out my life in Uncle Vanyas from Olivier’s legendary Chichester production to Peter Stein’s luminous Italian version. But Sam Mendes’s revival, with its mixture of visual clarity and emotional charity, unquestionably belongs in the premier league.
My one doubt concerns Mendes’s use of Brian Friel’s “version” of Chekhov’s play: more a Friel-isation than a faithful realisation. For a start Friel builds up the character of Telegin by giving him a running gag about his unstoppable perspiration; but “Do you sweat much yourself?” is not the kind of question a family dependent would ask of a privileged guest like Yelena.
There is also something faintly judgmental about Friel’s version, so that when Yelena scorns the idea of teaching “snotty brats”, you feel she is being portrayed as a hoity-toity urban snob.
But although the version is over-assertive, Mendes’s cast capture brilliantly the characters’ journey from ignorance to knowledge in the course of a disruptive summer. Simon Russell Beale’s Vanya is simply amazing. He offers you the spectacle of an ironic, intelligent 47-year-old man gazing at Yelena with the dotty helplessness of a moonstruck adolescent: aware of his own absurdity but powerless to prevent it.
But Russell Beale is at his finest in the great scene where he wakes from his dream at the news that the professor plans to sell the estate: he seethes with impotent fury at the realisation that his self-denying existence has been totally without point. And, as he denies the professor’s charge that he is a “nonentity”, Russell Beale extends a charity to the character that beautifully matches Chekhov’s.
What Mendes conveys, however, is the extent to which all the characters’ lives have been changed in the course of a summer. Emily Watson’s marvelous Sonya is no dowdy drudge but a passionate woman who grasps Astrov’s hand with sensual fervour only to come up against his emotional indifference. And Mark Strong gives us an unsuually arrogant Astrov whose ecological ideals are touched with sexual vanity but who in the end is forced to confront his essential solitude. Equally, Helen McCrory’s Yelena comes to understand that her destructive magnetism is a way of making up for the barrenness of her marriage. The one character resistant to change is David Bradley’s perfect Professor who departs wreathed in pedagogic smugness.
Crowning an excellent evening is Anthony Ward’s design. But the ultimate test of any Vanya is whether it stirs you to the depths of your soul; and that is one which Mendes’s production passes with flying colours.
· Until November 20. Box office: 020-7369 1732.
