‘Uncle Vanya’ Review: Chekhov by Candlelight

The heart of any production of “Uncle Vanya” is the tender relationship between the title character and his niece, Sonya. The primacy of their connection in the web of feelings explored in the play is embedded in that title, in fact, since Vanya is “uncle” only to Sonya. And that heart beats with a quiet but fierce intensity in the small-scale production that recently reopened, after a brief run earlier this summer, in a loft space downtown.

Vanya is played by David Cromer, one of the city’s premier directors (he won a Tony for the musical “The Band’s Visit”) but also, obviously, an actor; his New York breakthrough came in a similarly intimate production of “Our Town,” which he directed and in which he played the Stage Manager. Sonya is played by Marin Ireland, a longtime stage veteran with remarkable range.

Their rapport here is warm and solicitous on both sides. Having worked together on the family’s country estate, laboring not in their own interest but primarily for the benefit of Vanya’s late sister’s husband, the retired professor Serebryakov ( Thomas Jay Ryan ), Vanya and Sonya have a kind of emotional symbiosis that here, in a small space that seats just 95 audience members, spreads a kind of shimmering glow around the room—much the way the candles that are often used as the primary source of light in the production send flickering shadows against the walls.

But the depth of Mr. Cromer’s and Ms. Ireland’s performances goes beyond just an easy establishment of Vanya and Sonya’s mutual love and regard. Both seem to be approaching their characters from a blank-slate perspective. Vanya is the disappointed, grumpy figure one has encountered in other productions, but he never comes across as a whiny sad-sack; there is a soft but steely dignity to Mr. Cromer’s Vanya that suggests that, had circumstances—or his own choices—been otherwise, Vanya might have cut loose and made something substantial of himself.

Ms. Ireland—who with her willowy beauty might have been cast as Serebryakov’s young wife, Yelena (Julia Chan)—likewise finds delicate colors in her role that suggest that Sonya’s loyalty to Vanya and her hapless devotion to Dr. Astrov ( Will Brill ) are not indications of a doormat-like nature but of a valiant woman who will forge ahead even in the face of shattering disappointment. (The famous final speech is delivered not with doom-laden woe but cajoling reasonableness.) The backward baseball cap she wears at one point—the production is in modern-dress—suggests a tomboyish energy brimming beneath her self-effacing surface.

In fact, this revelatory production, directed by Jack Serio, sweeps away many preconceptions about the characters. Chekhov’s play has been so frequently staged that it sometimes seems the roles are fixed in amber and actors must struggle to free themselves from tradition. Here, virtually all succeed in doing so.

Astrov is often cast as a handsome if dissipated figure, exuding languid cynicism born of his defeated idealism. Mr. Brill, by contrast, hardly seems the magnetically alluring figure who would inspire both Sonya’s adoration and Yelena’s idle flirtation; when he says, “I’m getting to be a freak,” it seems vividly true, with Mr. Brill’s wiry hair and sometimes antic disposition indicating a man whose attraction is his eccentricity.

Nor does Mr. Ryan’s Serebryakov fit the traditional mold of a self-pitying and easily despisable figure. Yes, Mr. Ryan’s precise enunciation indicates Serebryakov’s lofty pretensions, and his casual expectation of having his whims indulged is duly marked. But Mr. Ryan, younger than most actors in the role, also brings a natural humanity to his performance, a sense that he is truly wounded by Vanya’s animosity. And when Serebryakov sits the family down to suggest that they sell the estate—causing Vanya to fly into a murderous rage—he speaks with sensitivity, not as someone laying down an incontrovertible fiat.

As Yelena, Ms. Chan, with her pixie haircut and jewel-toned clothing, certainly establishes the character’s natural glamour. But this Yelena also exudes a wisdom and emotional maturity that finds her indulgent of her husband, but sympathetic to and solicitous of the tortured feelings of both Vanya, whose puppyish adoration she treats with a metaphoric pat on the head, and the also-smitten Astrov, who interests her but whose indiscriminate advances she knows to keep at arm’s length.

The intimacy of the setting, with the audience close to the action, which takes place on minimal sets by Walt Spangler, certainly enhances the feeling that we are seeing these familiar characters with new eyes. But it is the director and his cast who are responsible for the production’s arresting freshness.

In most productions, one comes away with the sense that these people’s destinies have been fixed since long before the play began; the heavy hand of fate seems to be an unseen character. But here one has the mournful feeling that for all of the characters an alternative path might have been forged, a happier future secured, if only they had the courage or the chance to see themselves, and one another, from a new perspective.

—Mr. Isherwood is the Journal’s theater critic.