Latest news with #ShakespeareTheatreCompany
Washington Post
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Andrew Scott and Hugh Bonneville lead dueling takes on ‘Uncle Vanya'
A half dozen or more Chekhov plays have hit major stages this spring, with renowned actors biting off big roles — or all of them at once, in the case of Andrew Scott — and invigorating the writer's legacy as a preeminent chronicler of the human condition. This month, Cate Blanchett concludes her West End run in a cheeky, modern spin on 'The Seagull,' while her 'Tár' co-star Nina Hoss leads the Brooklyn transfer of a British take on 'The Cherry Orchard' that's both intimate and bombastic. Now, the Northeast Corridor is telling a tale of two Vanyas, with Hugh Bonneville of 'Downton Abbey' headlining a broad and airy 'Uncle Vanya' at Shakespeare Theatre Company, while Scott shape-shifts in 'Vanya,' a London-born solo version shot through with melancholy now running in New York's West Village. Both are fresh, plain-spoken adaptations but could be two entirely different plays if they didn't share the same source material — the genius of which partly lies in its malleability. There are infinite ways to live a life — or to endure, as Chekhov's characters often feel they must — but only a handful of guiding forces when you really boil it down: Desire, purpose, money, death. (Anything missing probably falls under the first.) You can laugh or cry about it, and Chekhov demonstrates the pleasures and necessities of doing both. Humor is played to the hilt in artistic director Simon Godwin's staging at STC, which swiftly assumes the rhythms of a drawing room comedy. There is a haut bohemian vibe to the country estate where Bonneville's Vanya and its other perennial residents are compelled to entertain a couple of intrusive city folk: his late sister's widower, the vain intellectual Alexandre (Tom Nelis), and his beguiling, much younger new wife, Yelena (Ito Aghayere). The doctor, Ástrov (John Benjamin Hickey, soulful as ever), is called to tend the former's gout, but lingers to admire the latter's beauty. It's obvious up front that Sonya (Melanie Field), Alexandre's daughter and Vanya's niece, is smitten and the doctor oblivious — she practically nips at his heels like a puppy. Vanya, here an especially slobby slave to impulse, openly confesses his love for Yelena, who shoos him like a slobbering dog. The stage is set for disappointment all around, though you wouldn't know it for much of the show. The prevailing mood of leisure betrays only brief hints that they're all quite miserable underneath. That's because in this telling most everyone says exactly what they mean, whether the streamlined dialogue of Connor McPherson's translation encourages them to not. Subtlety and subtext seem to be out for a leisurely hike. McPherson shifts the setting from Russia to the Ukrainian countryside, where there's a polyglot feel to the ensemble, from Bonneville's British tongue to the booming vowels of Craig Wallace, who lends the family's penniless dependent an unusual assurance. Vanya's mother (Sharon Lockwood), known here as 'Grandmaman,' even gets a French saveur. This collection of disparate cultures — in a story that's ultimately about home — gleans cohesion through design. Robert Brill's romantically distressed set (peeling ivory paint, plush upholstery, faded wood), and the elegantly layered costumes by Susan Hilferty and Heather C. Freedman, add appealing depth and texture where the performance style favors a flat directness. Bonneville's Vanya is an amusing cad, disarming his resentful gripes with humor that's more charming than it is rightfully pissed off. His performance is an absolute pleasure. But it means that Vanya's pivot to indignation — when Alexandre proposes selling the estate — is too abrupt to buy. He does not ultimately seem like a man who'd try to take anyone's life into his hands. Joyful though it is, the production's levity costs it believable gravitas as fates descend into resigned ambivalence. Misery in Chekhov so often arises from secret or frustrated longings, which simmer just below the surface, and then boil people from the inside or erupt with scalding intensity. Here, the players are either too easy to read (poor Sonya) or a bit too good at keeping that turmoil under wraps until the moment it bursts into view. There are benefits to this approach: The co-production with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, where Godwin's staging premiered in February, is delightfully buoyant and easy to follow. Little guesswork is required to intuit how anyone really feels. But a thread goes missing when we don't feel like confidants to Chekhov's characters, privy to the inner conflicts they otherwise keep hidden. Scott has the benefit, in this regard, of being the only one onstage in 'Vanya,' adapted with fleet economy by Simon Stephens and directed with ease and ingenuity by Sam Yates. Every exchange feels like a secret confession. Every character trembles with something they dare not say out loud. There's coyness, intrigue and even palpable eroticism between thwarted lovers who never appear side by side. Somehow, it's also funny as hell. Scott's embodiment of each character is so vivid and distinct that you can imagine the whole array of them present at once — and how they would respond in a scene, even in their phantom absence. One of the intoxicating effects of his performance is that it allows you to observe a whole constellation of desires, worries and regrets mapped out by a single body. It's a testament to the actor's protean emotional range and readiness that he's able to illuminate so many shades of life. It's also thrilling proof that Chekhov captured the very essence of what it means to be human. Uncle Vanya, through April 20 at Shakespeare Theatre Company's Harmon Hall in Washington. About 2 hours and 35 minutes with an intermission. Vanya, through May 11 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York. About 1 hour and 50 minutes without an intermission.
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Lobs Dodgy 'Conflict Of Interest' Accusation At Judge Who Tried To Halt Migrant Deportations
President Donald Trump screamed 'conflict of interest' while going after the judge who temporarily ordered he halt migrant deportations done under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The chief executive continued his attacks on Judge James E. Boasberg in a Saturday night post on Truth Social, sharing a group photo that showed the jurist standing besides former Second Gentleman, Douglas Emhoff, and six other people. 'SUCH A CONFLICT OF INTEREST!' Trump wrote in all caps. The accusation was thin at best. The photo was simply from Boasberg and Emhoff's time participating in the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Mock Trial in Washington, D.C., in 2022 and did nothing to indicate the duo knew each other outside of the event, in either a professional or social capacity. Trump began to direct his ire at Boasberg last weekend, almost immediately after the judge ordered a flight deporting a group of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador to be stopped. Though Trump ignored the order, that didn't stop him from lashing out at Boasberg online, where he dubbed him a 'troublemaker and agitator' while calling for his impeachment. The outburst was enough to make the Supreme Court's Chief Justice John Robertsrebuke the president in a statement, where he reminded him that impeachment was 'not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.' Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Rebukes Trump In Rare Statement Trump Ramps Up Attacks On Judges, Calls Out Justice John Roberts Federal Judge Clashes With DOJ Lawyers As Possible 'Constitutional Crisis' Looms
Los Angeles Times
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Hugh Bonneville stars in an impressively poised revival of ‘Uncle Vanya' at Berkeley Rep
Berkeley — It's astonishing what a good director can do. The best among them can turn the disparate elements of theater into something seamlessly whole. Simon Godwin, artistic director of Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., pulls off this feat in 'Uncle Vanya,' a production at Berkeley Repertory Theatre that has one foot in the 21st century and another at the turn of the 20th. Irish playwright Conor McPherson has adapted Anton Chekhov's 1897 drama, and the result is a conversational English version without any of the starchiness that attaches to the more self-consciously 'classical' translations. McPherson takes liberties, setting the play in 1900 central Ukraine and, perhaps more consequently, elucidating the psychology where Chekhov was a tad more ambiguous. He also gives these Chekhovian wobblers more spine while curtailing some of the excesses that threaten to turn character into caricature. Godwin's superb company, led by Hugh Bonneville ('Downton Abbey') in the title role, smoothly delivers the dialogue as though it were one of McPherson's original plays. There isn't even any awkwardness about the clash of accents. At one point, Melanie Field, who plays Sonya, mocks the plummy British sound of Bonneville's Vanya. For a brief second, the fourth wall of Godwin's production is breached. But this momentary interruption in the normal order hardly matters because the ensemble is so comfortably aligned in the theatrical universe that Godwin has created. The staging has an aesthetic unity that's helped along by the airy, graceful scenic design of Robert Brill and the pastiche costumes of Susan Hilferty and Heather C. Freedman that balance the play's era and our own. Cellist Kina Kantor, an ensemble member who shadows the action, provides musical accompaniment that lends the human comedy an indisputable gravity. The freedom of this 'Uncle Vanya,' a co-production between Berkeley Rep (where it runs through Sunday) and Shakespeare Theatre Company (where it runs from March 30 through April 20), refreshes the play. Unlike last season's Lincoln Center Theater revival, directed by Lila Neugebauer, this production has a stylistic sure-footedness. All the actors are on the same page, equally at home with Chekhov's realism and buoyant theatricality. The success Godwin has had with Shakespeare — he directed a muscular 'Macbeth' last year starring Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma — is evident in the agility of his approach here. One of the mistakes directors make is assuming that Chekhov's plays offer a naturalistic slice of life. Chekhov bares the inner lives of his characters. No playwright of the modern era has more compassionately — or accurately — dramatized the human consciousness of time, loss and the gap between hope and reality. But the plays are rigorously composed works of art, availing themselves of a theatrical vocabulary that extends beyond photographic realism. 'Uncle Vanya,' in short, isn't a television drama, much as contemporary actors trained for the camera might barrel forward in a mumbling Netflix fashion. Godwin attends to the spatial patterns of the play, the movement of character across the stage in clean formal patterns that might suggest a dance piece titled 'Exits and Entrances' were Chekhov's artistic hand not so discreet. But it's the characterizations that distinguish this production. Bonneville, resembling a canceled journalist wallowing in sarcasm with a bottle of booze, lends Vanya a flailing, self-deprecating levity. Vanya doesn't need anyone to tell him that he's a miscast romantic, too goofy to have his heartbreak taken seriously. It's a credit to Bonneville's performance that we feel the character's disappointment in love and in life all the more acutely. The object of Vanya's mad infatuation is Yelena (Ito Aghayere), the much younger wife of the retired professor, Alexandre (Tom Nelis), who was married to Vanya's late sister. Alexandre and Yelena's arrival at the country estate managed by Vanya and Sonya, the professor's put-upon daughter, has thrown the household into chaos. Vanya can think only of Yelena while Sonya is in the throes of love for Ástrov (John Benjamin Hickey), who has become smitten with Yelena while attending to the hypochondriac professor and drinking with his old buddy Vanya. Aghayere's distinctive Yelena is too much a frustrated human being to come across, as she often does in revivals, as an aloof siren. Her dissatisfaction with her crabby old husband drives her into the same state of amorous turmoil that Vanya and Sonya find themselves in. Great beauty turns out to be no defense against the longings of the heart. Aghayere's Yelena represents an evolution of Chekhov's character. It's no wonder that, as she plays the piano despite her husband's demand for silence (a McPherson twist ), everyone falls under the spell of her seductive defiance. Field's somber, clear-eyed Sonya has ardent desires but few illusions. If it weren't for Yelena's meddling, she'd let the dream of a life with Ástrov pass her by without a murmur. The sorrow she feels is crushing but not new to her. Field's Sonya looks as if she has been holding back tears ever since her mother died. Her stoicism is all the more ennobling, given how much it costs her. Hickey never loses sight of the doctor's dual nature. The idealism that makes Ástrov so appealing — he's a passionate environmentalist and a medical humanitarian — doesn't negate the casual self-destruction and dismissive carelessness that lead him to guzzle vodka and ignore the tumult his visits engender. Nelis renders the professor a pompous and pedantic twit but not a heartless one. He isn't allowed to become the play's villain despite his selfish plan to sell the estate out from under his family. Sharon Lockwood's Maríya, Vanya's mother, is similarly endowed with redeeming qualities. She still drives her son insane with the way she worships the professor, but she's not as infuriatingly unreasonable as Chekhov permits her to be. McPherson extends Chekhov's soulful generosity throughout the cast. Craig Wallace's Telégin, known as 'Waffles' for his pockmarked skin, is an amiable fumbler yet suffused with kindness and possessing an implacable decency. Nancy Robinette as Marína, the elderly nanny who comforts those she has long served with maternal acceptance, maintains the long view in a household caught up in short-term squabbles. The ending of 'Uncle Vanya,' a theatrical oil painting of human endurance, is exquisitely executed. As Bonneville's Vanya and Field's Sonya take shelter from the devastation of their dreams in the daily grind of their work, an image of life as it is authentically experienced is renewed onstage. Chekhov may not falsely console, but he dignifies the human struggle in a secular parable that lives again through the magic of ensemble brio and a director at the top of his game.
Washington Post
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
A buddy comedy that takes on apartheid
Odd couples are a durable storytelling device. Who better to outline one character's particulars than their total opposite? With 'Kunene and the King,' playwright and star John Kani aims to demonstrate far more than the mere differences between two men. The 82-year-old artist, whose legacy of activism onstage stretches back more than half a century, attempts to coalesce broad, thorny arguments about the fraught history of apartheid South Africa into this two-hander now running at Shakespeare Theatre Company. It's a noble undertaking and an unwieldy one, not least because the old timers he imagines butting heads aren't just stubborn but impervious to change.
