Review by Stuart Miller…

“Vanya” opens with a scene Anton Chekov never envisioned buy may have approved of. Prior to diving into the script and trying to bring the playwright’s eight characters to life, Scott himself pulls back a curtain at the rear of the stage revealing a mirror, revealing, in other words, that we are part of this show: it’s the idea that the work reflects our own emotional struggles, but also that he is aware that he is playing to us, telling us a story. Scott then emphasizes that by playfully flicking the lights over the audience and the stage on and off, giving us a wry look that draws a laugh but again makes it clear we are in this with him. 

At the end of “Uncle Vanya,” Vanya’s niece Sonya has a famous monologue about patiently suffering through unhappy lives, having faith that at the end she and Vanya will see “heaven shining like a jewel.” 

The imagery and language is explicitly religious, but in this version, which has been adapted by Simon Stephens, Sonya instead speaks of the stars glittering like diamonds in the sky providing some understanding of what life and its struggles, especially in search of love, was all about. 

The language harkened back to the imagery in the poignant ending of “All of Us Strangers,” in which Scott plays a lonely writer who is afraid to open the door to love, until it almost seems too late. That character was telling stories to an audience too, just like Scott in the opening scene of “Vanya.”

Even if most audience members won’t see the links between a small indie movie and a Russian classic, this show makes clear that Scott, who has talked in interviews about how a one-man version of the show highlights how “we’re all much more similar to each other than we think” strives to understand the connections and distances between people. 

(Sonya is unhappy because she has loved the doctor, who doesn’t love her back, Vanya is miserable because he has wasted his life serving Alexander; the former husband of Vanya’s beloved dead sister; the doctor is unhappy because he loves Helena, Alexander’s beautiful young wife and she won’t leave him; she’s unhappy for the same reason; Alexander is unhappy because he’s not as young, famous or wealthy as he used to be. In other words, Chekov’s Russians are not that different from modern Americans– they could certainly populate a current soap opera.) 

The play and the performer are both fantastic but it’s not clear that this is the best way to explore those ideas and dynamics. 

Scott is brilliant throughout, swerving from humor to anger to pathos in a heartbeat without it seeming forced. He never changes costume but switches effectively from one character to another with a small prop or a shift in body language that, for most of the play, provides plenty of clarity. There are indelible moments small and large where the one actor/multiple roles yields artistic dividends: when one character caresses another’s hand or when two characters wrestle over a bottle of vodka even though it’s just Scott’s one hand doing double duty. And there’s a love scene that is more erotic than you usually get in Chekov– when Scott pulls off his shirt and tumbles to the floor, it’s a moment somehow filled with passion, even though he’s making love by himself. (Michela Meazza is credited with “Physicality,” while Scott, Stephens, director Sam Yates, and scenic designer Rosanna Vize are all credited as co-creators.)

Scott is mesmerizing enough that the conceit of it all mostly doesn’t matter… until it does, although some of the fault lies with Stephen’s adaptation.  (Yates also takes one big swing, having Scott often reach for a little recorder that can play canned laughter or other sound effects– it furthers the idea that Scott is a modern actor performing for us, not these characters in a play, which in these moments feels gimmicky and distracting, even if it generates chuckles.)

In the opening scenes, Scott wrings every laugh he can from Chekov’s comedy– it’s funnier than other productions I’ve seen and not just because he’s jumping from one character to the next, but just in the way he delivers a line– deadpan or with histrionics, depending on the character– or raises an eyebrow.  (One small problem with this is that later as the stakes rise, audience members kept laughing, sometimes at serious moments; sure that’s on them, but they’ve also been trained by the performance to react that way.)

Some of Stephens’ script strengthens the story by making it feel more modern, like the cursing and shifting the aging Alexander from being a pompous art professor to an equally bombastic filmmaker. 

But this shortened version may well confuse newbies to Chekov, people coming just to watch Scott. For starters, the title character (who really goes by Ivan) has had his role reduced, most notably his efforts to impress and woo Helena. There’s a logic to this– Stephens makes it more clear that he’s just desperate to be seen, to leave a mark, which resonates loudly when he bemoans his wasted life and picks up his gun at the climax. But Chekov’s writing showed that Ivan’s ardor for her is not love, just desperation to be noticed there in Alexander’s shadow and the show would have benefited from seeing more of Ivan, trapped by his own performative antics. 

And some of the climatic moments feel slighted, like the final scene between the doctor (here called Michael) and Helena (he also loves her, but his passion feels real to her and the audience) just before she departs from his life forever, as well as the moment when the plain Sonya realizes that Michael will never love her, leaving her to grow old as a spinster. 

Those should be two of the play’s most powerful, heartbreaking moments and their diminishment– and in this case, I think it’s because one actor, no matter how good, can’t help but lose some of that in the role switching– means that while “Vanya” is always entertaining and Scott’s acting often will move and maybe gut audiences emotionally, its impact is less than what the combination of Chekov and Scott might have you hoping for. 

“Vanya” is being performed through May 11th at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street. It runs 110 minutes without an intermission. 

Photos: Julieta Cervantes.