The luminous vulnerability of Jack Serio’s Uncle Vanya

I ALMOST FEEL BAD writing about Jack Serio’s new production of Uncle Vanya, because the odds are that––unless you already have a ticket, can afford to purchase one on the secondary market, or were granted access (as I was) as a journalist—there’s little to no chance you’re going to get to see it. The show, produced by OHenry Productions, has a sold-out run of only sixteen performances, and it’s being staged in a private loft in the Flatiron district for a capacity audience of exactly forty people. It’s the Rao’s of the summer Manhattan theater scene.

Yet as Pete Wells once wrote, defending his practice of writing about such fine dining establishments that only a small percentage of his readers will ever actually eat in, “at a handful of very good [restaurants], the food and the room and the wine and the hospitality come together in ways that express something universal about our culture.” That would seem to be the goal of many artists, culinary or otherwise, and of this or any Vanya. Chekhov’s drama, after all, traffics in matters of the heart, in evergreen issues, and in fundamental questions about everyday human existence.

Every revival of a classic is necessarily in conversation with those that have come before it. For me, the two productions that this one seems evoke most are the epochal André Gregory/Wallace Shawn adaptation (captured by Louis Malle in his 1994 film Vanya on 42nd Street) and Richard Nelson’s 2018 in-the-round production at Hunter College starring Jay O. Sanders (a sort of companion piece to Nelson’s own Rhinebeck cycle). Like both of those adaptations, the power of this Vanya derives from a daring and disarming intimacy.

Unlike those earlier stagings, Serio’s Vanya doesn’t aim to shatter. Elegantly designed by Walt Spangler (whose antique furnishings, in concert with Carrie Mossman’s tasteful props, transport without ever trying to hide the fact that we’re in a Manhattan apartment), is instead played in a muted, minor key, shaded by a dark, bluesy sense of shame: shame for being flawed, shame for harboring unmet desires, shame for leading unremarkable lives. The production’s most piercing moments are not the loud, shouty ones of the play’s climax, but rather the quiet, melancholy duets that occur between misfits unable to connect—scenes of tenderness and vulnerability that almost seem more aligned with the latter-day sensibility and aesthetic of Tennessee Williams than with that of everyone’s favorite Russian physician. That’s no knock against Serio’s vision; on the contrary, his is a refreshing, revealing prism through which to appreciate Chekhov’s endlessly rich tale of lives and dreams colliding at an estate in the countryside.

I haven’t seen every play currently on offer in New York, but it’s hard to imagine that there are two performances better than those being given in this Vanya. And no, I’m not talking about the show’s two marquee names, David Cromer and Bill Irwin—two bastions of American theater whose careers and contributions to the lively arts are unimpeachable. While it’s thrilling to see both of them at work in such close quarters, the luminosity that overwhelms them, and overwhelmed me, emanates from the actors Marin Ireland (as Sonya), and Will Brill (as Astrov).

Ireland is a revelation, her every glance and gesture suffused with those yearnings, anxieties, and passions that––from time to time––keep us all up at night: If only I were someone else, if only people could see me for who I really am, if only I mattered. Brill, meanwhile, brings a weary, sardonic brilliance to his portrayal of a small-town doctor grappling with the realities of getting older and not knowing one’s place in the world. Together, the pair offer us portraits of lonely people in the throes of desperate longing, wracked by harrowing self-doubt and self-loathing, rendered with a breathtaking verisimilitude.

And yet the play is not called “Niece Sonya,” nor “Doctor Astrov.” I admire David Cromer so much (his Our Town, at the former Barrow Street Theater in 2009, and which he starred in and directed, remains an all-time highlight of my theatergoing experiences), but I found it hard to empathize with his dour, grumpy, distracted Vanya. (Full disclosure: I saw the show on opening night, and this could well be the sort of thing that gets ironed out as he settles into the role.) Shawn gave us a playful goofiness that offset the character’s pathetic state, and Sanders’s magnetic charisma always make his performances interesting and engaging, but Serio allows Cromer’s Vanya to almost disappear into his depression, flattening and displacing him from the play’s center, and effectively throwing the balance of the whole out of whack. 

Irwin, for his part (and fresh from his memorable turn as Clov in Beckett’s Endgame at Irish Rep), is always eminently watchable, and that holds true here. His Serebryakov is haughty, jerky, and detached. But the other major standout in the cast is Will Dagger’s Telegin (aka Waffles), a performance rich with subtlety and crafty, sneaky invention––not least of which are his finely executed interludes on acoustic guitar, adding shades of feeling and nuance to the proceedings.

But it is the portrayals offered by Ireland and Brill that make this Uncle Vanya special, and that remind us that, like all of Chekhov’s plays, this one, first produced in 1899 (Serio uses the Paul Schmidt translation), has not dated a whit. We’re still talking about the vanishing of the world we once knew; we’re still worried about looming ecological threats; we still feel badly about getting old. We worry that we’re ugly, and that the lives we’re leading are devoid of value. We’re still asking the same questions. How can we attain happiness? What are the mechanisms with which to tolerate our own imperfections? How will we be remembered?

In this production, ghosts from another time and another culture are reanimated to present us with the same answers we’re still stuck with, which is to say, very few. We’re all muddling in the dark, doing the best we can; no one thinks about us as much we think about ourselves; life is made up of the little, insignificant things we do every day. And then, it’s curtains.

— Howard Fishman

Uncle Vanya runs from June 28 to July 16 at a private loft in New York’s Flatiron District.