By Annette Hinkle
The scene: a lovely estate in the country. The players: family members and loyal staff who have been keeping the place humming along nicely for decades. Enter: the aging owner of the property, a professor, who is related to the family through his marriage to a now dead wife. He brings with him a new, much younger bride and news that he’s arrived at some major decisions about all of their futures.
This is “Uncle Vanya,” a tale of family strife, secret love, misplaced loyalties and dreams deferred. And though it sounds as if it could easily be a 21st century storyline, in fact, it’s the plot of a play written well over a century ago by Anton Chekhov, that most enduring of Russian playwrights.
In “Uncle Vanya,” Serebryakov is the aging professor and Elena his glamorous young wife. The rural estate supports the couple’s lifestyle in the city, thanks to the hard work of Vanya, the brother of Serebryakov’s dead first wife, and Sonya, Serebryakov’s daughter from that first marriage. When the bomb is dropped that Serebryakov plans to sell the estate to finance his comfortable lifestyle, he transforms from the family’s longtime protector to the source of its demise. And no one is happy about it.
In recent weeks, director Stephen Hamilton has kept cast and crew busy in preparation for a 12 performance run of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” which is being produced by Guild Hall Presents and opens tonight in East Hampton at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater. For Hamilton, it’s a task complicated by the fact that he’s not only directing, but also taking on a key role himself — that of Astrov, the local doctor and Vanya’s longtime friend with whom he commiserates about the lives they both could have led, while sharing their mutual admiration of the beautiful Elena.
“We’ll see what happens this week,” said Hamilton during a break in rehearsals last Saturday. “I think if I wasn’t nervous there’d be something wrong. Acting and directing at the same time is crazy. I’m really stretching myself as both a director and an actor.”
He’s in good company. “Uncle Vanya” premiered in Moscow in 1899 and was directed by Constantin Stanislavski, the father of method acting. Just as Stanislavski’s legacy has endured, perhaps what makes Chekhov’s writing so enduring and contemporary is the way in which his plays are resolved in the final act. There are no absolutes and audience members are left to decide for themselves what it all means.
“Chekov was one of the first to incorporate the ambiguous ending,” explained Hamilton. “It was a break from melodrama in the 1890s. He really was the first modern playwright. This play is known as a comedy, but it’s nuanced. There is currency about people’s dreams and frustrations. It’s the small little events that happen between people that reveal character, story and humor. It’s not that kind of ‘ha ha’ humor but more of self identify. You identify with these eccentric people.”
“There’s also a theme of sustainability running through this play,” he continued. “Chekov was a real tree hugger, one of the first environmentalists. Astrov, who represents Chekhov’s voice, talks with great passion of the dangers of deforestation and loss of woodlands and how it’s going to affect the lives of people in the future. He was ahead of his time.”
That may be why Chekhov remains a favorite of acting teachers and their students. Hamilton, who teaches acting, finds the valuable material for students when they are crafting monologues or developing scene techniques.
“It’s so good to work with,” he said. “It demands a real authenticity and simplicity from your students.”
Though young performers may love his work, Chekhov is a playwright perhaps best understand by actors of a certain age. With themes of opportunities missed, he is a playwright who embodies what we would today label the middle age crisis. Often his characters are in the midst of reflection — lamenting how life has passed them by and wondering how they now find themselves on the other end of many years with little or nothing to show for it. That’s certainly true in “Uncle Vanya,” a play that revolves around the regret of wasted years spent toiling away for the benefit of another man.
“I certainly didn’t appreciate Chekhov in its fullness until the last 10 or 15 years,” admitted Hamilton. “It’s about missed opportunity, for Vanya, who feels life is over at 47, and Astrov as well. For Vanya the veil of Serebryakov has fallen and he sees him for who he is. He realizes he’s wasted so much of his life honoring, supporting and working his ass off for him. Astrov is more mired in present day obstacles and blindness of the human race.”
“I hope people get the subtlety,” said Hamilton. “The leading element in Chekov is character, not plot. To discover the comedy, you have to break apart the subtle events that happen between people. It’s not completely apparent on the page – you have to see it for yourself.”
Seeing it for yourself will be an experience enhanced by the fact that the setting for this “Uncle Vanya” will be an intimate one — performed as a black box theater production self-contained on the stage of the John Drew Theater. Audience members (the space can seat about 50), actors and the stage crew will all be behind the curtain and within close proximity of one another. It’s a method that Hamilton has used successfully before as a director (and actor) at Guild Hall, in the 2006 production of Yasmina Reza’s play “Art.” He feels this play is also ideal for the format.
“There is a sense of audience camaraderie — visceral communication that goes on between them, subconscious and definitely in this setting,” said Hamilton. “The production allows them to see the theater. They can see the fly rail to the left, the furniture ready to go on for Scene II, the backdrop beautifully lit, which is just 10 by 20 feet.”
“Hopefully, they’ll get a sense of the stagecraft,” he added. “It’s a reminder that this is a play. This is something real going on between people. But look, it’s also a theater. The stagecraft isn’t hidden. I love that experience and the idea – we’ll see how it works.”
Hamilton noted that while the economics of the more intimate performing space makes sense given there’s less of a theater going population on the East End at this time of year, the black box experience was, first and foremost, an artistic choice.
He explained that it was another production of this play, “Vanya on 42nd Street” by
André Gregory and Wallace Shawn, that provided the inspiration. That production, which was a pared down version of the play workshopped over the course of three years in the abandoned shell of a Manhattan theater, was released as a film by Louis Malle in 1994. Hamilton recalled seeing an interview with Gregory and Shawn in which they talked about how much they hated traditionally staged theater.
“Wally said, ‘here’s what happens. You sit at the back of the mezzanine and are watching an intimate, sexy or quiet scene,’” explained Hamilton. “‘Because of the demands of a 1,000 seat house, the actors are screaming their lines. It’s fake-o crap. They would never do it for 12 to 15 people at a time.’”
“I wanted to have the challenge and present the challenge to a fellow group of actors to be as authentic emotionally and physically as they could be without the demands of pushing beyond the proscenium,” said Hamilton. “This brings people in, wraps them around the production and makes them feel as close as they can. We’re creating critical mass in a small space that is close to the action.”
Guild Hall Presents “Uncle Vanya” opening tonight, Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 8 p.m. at the John Drew Theater (158 Main Street, East Hampton). The cast stars Fred Melamed (Uncle Vanya), Stephen Hamilton (Astrov), Rachel Feldman (Elena), Herb Foster (Professor Serebryakov), Alicia St. Louis (Sonya), Daniel Becker (Waffles), Delphi Harrington (Maria) and Janet Sarno (Nanny). Shows Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m. through May 20. Tickets are $25 ($23 Guild Hall members) and $10 for students. Call 324-4050 to reserve.
Top: Delphi Harrington, Herb Foster and Fred Melamed in "Uncle Vanya."
