I wonder what Anton Chekhov would have thought about his “Uncle Vanya” being performed inside a factory that manufactures titanium anodizing racks — a venue that is a proud member of the International Hard Anodizing Association, as distinct from, say, the League of Chicago Theatres.
No doubt he’d have been pleased to think of an audience looking for parallels between the racks of stacked lumber on the factory walls and Professor Serebryakov’s run-down country estate where the sad-sack Mikhail Lvovich Astrov laments the disappearance of Russia’s forests.
I must say there was something about seeing this show as much of Los Angeles burned up, listening to the proto-environmentalist Astrov talk of how forests are disappearing, rivers running dry, animals dying. “The climate is spoiled,” he says in this 1897 play, “and the Earth becomes poorer and uglier every day.” Furthermore, he is all too aware that no one really is listening to what he has to say.
Frankly, that potent resonance hit me more than any site-specific analogies, with the exception of the quotidian dustiness of a factory floor and how that evoked one of Chekhov’s most frequent and resonant images, that of a fading locale that can be filled with people living lonely lives of quiet desperation.
This is the second show that the director Spencer Huffman has staged for small, sold-out audiences at Servi-Sure in Chicago’s Bowmanville neighborhood; the first was Caryl Churchill’s “Far Away.” As I noted in my review of that first show, there is a long Chicago tradition of site-specific theater, especially in locales with blue-collar roots, and it is good to see it reignited.
But I’ll say this about Huffman’s “Uncle Vanya,” and my review has much in common with that for “Far Away.”
Huffman knows how to cast and he is similarly capable of creating compelling intimate scenes with highly skilled actors. “Uncle Yanya” has some very accomplished players in Larry Grimm, consistently droll and compelling as the title character, more aware with each passing day of how much he is wasting his life; Rae Gray, a live and distinguished Yelena; Jonathan Weir, an aptly clueless Professor; and Jonathan Shaboo, a wound-tight but still wry Astrov, deftly benefiting from one of Chekhov’s greatest skills, which was to write characters who were at once sufficiently self-aware to feel their ennui but too impotent to actually change its cause.
I last saw “Vanya” at Lincoln Center with Steve Carell. I thought this Chicago effort was a far superior staging, mostly because the Lincoln Center version featured characters in insolation and Huffman’s show revealed far more interconnections, which is crucial, to my mind, to producing Chekhov with success. Simply put, this “Uncle Vanya,” which also features the emotionally powerful Jean Marie Koon as Marina, has lots of great little scenes from superb Chicago actors to enjoy.
The issue, though, is that Huffman has to explain more of the how and why in how they are being put together. I’d argue these scenes are insufficiently varied when it comes to the necessary physicality of the piece and while the dramatic tension certainly went far beyond a simmer, I wouldn’t say it boiled when and where it could and should. Without that, one’s mind can wander.
Part of the issue is the Annie Baker translation, which is not my favorite, perhaps because Baker and Chekhov are too similar; the best Chekhov translations tend to be more counterinituitive efforts from maverick writers. Still, it’s on the director to foreground the macro vision as well as focusing on the quality of the work around the table.
Simply put, it’s a bold and interesting choice to do Chekhov in a factory, but it’s not enough. Next time, and I sincerely hope there is one, Huffman should take many more risks. Why not? People are paying attention now.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Uncle Vanya” (3 stars)
When: Through Feb 1
Where: New Theatre Project at Servi-Sure, 2020 W. Rascher Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes
Tickets: $30 (suggested donation) at unclevanya.my.canva.site
