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The New Uncle Vanya’s Aims Are Off
Steve Carell & Co. are individually appealing in Heidi Schreck’s translation, but the show itself never comes to life.
There’s a reason that whole schools of acting — and the entire art of modern direction — developed in tandem with Chekhov’s plays, and it’s because they require the construction of vast underground cities: The text itself is a constellation of spires, minarets, and domes, their tips peeking up through the surface of a desert after a civilization-burying sandstorm. While all this updating and tone tweaking is theoretically fine, it lands Neugebauer’s production in a kind of no-place, a generalized now-ishness that hits bumps when a bit of formality escapes Schreck’s sandpaper (“Two or three more words and then it’s over,” “I can feel the touch of his hands … The second he shows up, I run to him and start babbling”), or when a character’s attitude jangles up against our present. There’s a photo of sad birch trees as a backdrop (though it moves up- and downstage, the extra depth it reveals is never taken advantage of as playing space), and in front of it are standard collections of furniture, one meant to be outdoors, the next indoors — though, strangely, each setup has almost the exact same footprint, as if the company got used to one arrangement in the rehearsal room and never bothered to rethink it.
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