‘Uncle Vanya’ returns to Sydney at the Ensemble Theatre

First performed at the turn of last century. Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya has had so many recent revivals that it could be considered a production for our time.

That is certainly the view of one of Australia’s greatest playwrights, Joanna Murray-Smith, who has been tasked with adapting the text for the Ensemble Theatre’s new production of Vanya.

“Chekhov is the greatest playwright of them all and it’s both an enormous privilege and responsibility to adapt his work for a contemporary audience,:” Joanna Murray-Smith, playwright, said.

“My approach is to tread lightly and to keep as my guiding light the desire for a line to elicit the same kind of reaction it might have elicited in the original audience, whilst updating the language itself.”

The enduring qualities of Uncle Vanya

The emotional sweep of Uncle Vanya could be summed up as a play about loss, though what that loss is the characters are unable to articulate.

A reworking of an earlier play The Wood Demon, Chekhov trimmed the cast to nine from the original twenty four and made the ending more ambiguous.

“All of the characters in Vanya might be found now, in almost any corner of the world, feeling the same emotions, regrets, desires as his characters felt well over a century ago,” Murray-Smith said.

“Language, political realities and wardrobes may change, but the most intimate elements of our humanity are timeless.”

At a brief glance the play deals with how an isolated estate manager, Vanya, deals with the news that the property is to be sold by its owner, an elderly professor who has a glamorous young wife.

Suddenly Vanya sees years of faithful service evaporate just to ensure a better lifestyle for the professor without any regard for Vanya and Sonya, the professor’s daughter from his first marriage.

And of course romantic tensions between characters are brought to the fore to complicate matters further but all is not bleak, as Chekhov has written the play with a light touch.

“Vanya has elements of both comedy and tragedy but was generally intended to be more comedic than it is often portrayed to be,” Murray-Smith said.

I want to highlight the poignancy of his characters and their sense of paralysis, humility, powerlessness and mortality, but I equally want to present Chekhov’s brilliant wit, irony and humour.”

A new take on an old classic

Tasked with realising Murray-Smith’s new take on a classic is the Ensemble’s artistic director Mark Kilmurry who has embraced her approach to the text.

“Joanna Murray-Smith has done a wonderful job in capturing the essence of Vanya as written by Chekhov and created a modern take on the language,” Mark Kilmurry, director, said.

“The idea of commissioning Joanna is to have a female perspective and that has come out in this text.”

Kilmurry has also had to adapt a vast play to the confines of the Ensemble’s stage without diminishing the original setting on a vast and isolated estate.

“We want to create a real place as though you are let in through the intimacy of the playing,”KIlmurry said.

“The idea is we are witnessing the action in the moment, right now (and) Nick Fry, designer, and I have talked about creating an atmosphere where we feel we are in a broken place away from the world.”

Bringing Uncle Vanya to life will be acclaimed actor Yalin Ozucelik (Cyrano de Bergerac, STC), Abbey Morgan (Class of 2016) as Sonya, Chantelle Jamieson (Godzilla x Kong) and Vanessa Downing (Home and Away) in double roles as Nanny and Mariya.

David Lynch (Four times Sydney Theatre Award nominee) is cast as Serebryakov, Tim Walter (As You Like It) is Astrov and the legendary John Gaden is Telyeghin.

“The beauty of Chekhov is his ability to create real relationships with real people,” Kilmurry said.

“We watch Chekhov now because he still speaks to us now; unrequited love, fear and jealousy; wanting to make a life for oneself… all relevant in today’s society.”

Uncle Vanya, 26 July-31 August
The Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall Street, Kirribilli
https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/uncle-vanya/