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Straightforward Chekhov

A new Vanya comes up short against a masterpiece
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 31st, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
At Švandovo, Luboš Veselý plays the title role with support from Apolena Veldová.
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Uncle Vanya (Strýček Váňa)

When: Friday, Nov. 2, at 7
Where: Švandovo Divadlo
Tickets: 160 –240 Kč, available at the venue
Performed in Czech with English surtitles

Is Prague big enough for two Vanyas? Could there be a more thankless task for a theater director here than to stage the very play that served as the swan song for Petr Lébl, the tragic genius of Divadlo na zábradlí, whose production continues on in na zábradlí’s repertoire as a perpetual memorial to its creator?
Director Michal Lang’s production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at Švandovo couldn’t be more different from Lébl’s brilliant, post-modernist masterpiece. With the notable exception of his odd, dreamlike framing of the play, Lang has produced something classically straightforward. He does not reinvent Vanya, nor does his production engender any new reading of the text, as Lébl’s most certainly does. Yet Lang’s production is a solid, workmanlike staging.
Švandovo’s Uncle Vanya is firmly placed within the farm manor house that Chekhov constructed. Ennui masks the desperation gnawing at the main characters: Vanya, well into his 40s, an intellectual who chose a deadening existence as the manager of his dead sister’s farm; and Sonya, his niece and fellow manager, who suffers an unrequited love for the local doctor, Astrov.
Their rustic solitude has, of course, been disrupted by the arrival of Sonya’s father, Professor Serebrjakov, a venerable nonentity and intellectual manqué, and his much younger second wife, Yelena, a beautiful and bored woman who inflames the imaginations of the lonely Vanya and Astrov.
As in all of Chekhov’s plays and later stories, plot is second to the moods that drive a particular moment in time. The characters will end where they began, struggling to harness their emotions to reality, and choosing to slog through (especially in Vanya) in what could have served as inspiration for Samuel Beckett’s famous line, “I can’t go on, I must go on, I’ll go on.”
In his one break from this realist approach, Lang begins and ends his production with the image of Vanya at sea — a rather ham-fisted bit of pantomime if we’re to read this literally. The only thing in the script that could be drafted into providing a base for this floating strand of fantasy is the lovesick Vanya playfully accusing Yelena of having mermaid’s blood. Is Vanya then, Ahab-like, supposed to be mentally trawling for the object of his rather indiscreet desire? It’s a more interesting notion than the character just being “at sea,” though little else lends itself to support it.
Still, Jaroslav Bonisch, hired into turning a house into a barge, has done an excellent job with the set. In a completely different metaphorical vein, Ivana Brádková’s white costumes finely communicate the frozen nature of the characters’ lives.
There are a number of good performances in Lang’s production, though on the two visits I made to the theater the cast hadn’t quite congealed into a company.
Švandovo stalwart Stanislav Šárský gives a fine, blustering performance as Serebrjakov, and Kamil Halbich makes for a rather youthfully rakish Astrov (though the feline Tomáš Pavelka is both too rakish and youthful by far for Waffles).
Apolena Veldová’s Sonya is a delicately constructed performance. Veldová manages to make Sonya sympathetic without ever stooping to ladle from the slough of despond, though na zábradlí’s Magdalena Sidonová’s Sonya remains definitive — a very hard act to follow.
Another difficult performance to overcome is Jiří Ornest’s electric Vanya in Lébl’s production. But Lang has lucked out with having Luboš Veselý in the role, wherein the actor creates a very childlike Vanya, a stunted, often embarrassingly earnest man.
Veselý generates most of the bitter comedy in Lang’s production, particularly when he accidentally comes across Yelena and Astrov kissing. He will later hide in a cupboard from Astrov like a truant schoolboy.
Yelena is split between two actresses in this production, and it’s worth trying to catch the evenings with Klára Cibulková, who remains the strongest actor in Švandovo’s company. Martina Válková’s Yelena is often too girlish and whiney for this coy Venus of the provinces. But Cibulková, as she is so often, is superb.
Those exhausted by the precious, by-rote lyricism of most Chekhov productions must see Lébl’s Uncle Vanya. But for those who are unfamiliar with Chekhov’s work, Lang’s Vanya offers a good, occasionally inspired, introduction.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (31/10/2007):

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