tired travelers on broadway
by
Douglas Messerli
Anton
Chekhov (translated by David Mamet, directed as a play by André Gregory), Louis
Malle (film director) Vanya on 42nd
Street / 1994
In his 2012
review of Louis Malle’s film Vanya on 42nd
Street, André Gregory’s direction of a production of the Chekov play,
translated by David Mamet, The New York
Times reviewer, Charles Taylor begins with what he describes as his usual
reaction to “seeing actors onstage”: “Oh, come off it.” Such a reaction was
almost inevitable to get approval from Gregory who works hard to force his
actors to uncover the “reality” of their roles by rehearsing over long years,
and producing his plays not on the normal proscenium stages, but in various
other kinds of spaces outside of stage lights and traditional costumes.
Vanya
on 42nd Street, staring one of Gregory’s favorites, Wallace
Shawn, as well as Julianne Moore, George Gaynes, Larry Pine, and numerous other
talented actors, is an almost documentary version of just such a production.
For years from 1989 to the early 1990s, Gregory used the vacant but soon-to-be
refurbished Victory Theater, which was originally opened by Oscar Hammerstein
in 1899 before it became a 42nd street porno theater. During that
same period I saw Mac Wellman’s Crowbar there,
with the audience sitting upon the stage (my friend Mac allowed be a balcony
seat where I could observe both audience and the theater actions).
For the later rehearsals of Vanya, however, one of which became the
movie that Malle filmed, he moved the production down the street to the former
New Amsterdam Theatre, whose stage was in such decay—eaten away by rats—that
they used what seems to be the lobby, also in grand decay.
True to is his anti-theatrical
perspective, Gregory, and Malle, begin with the characters arriving via subway
on 42nd Street, the lead, Shawn, devouring a knish from a food stand
that spells indigestion at first sight. The actors, gradually moving into the
dilapidated grand theater, begin talking as Shawn curls up on a couch for a
nap. Without our really knowing it, the play begins. As Taylor notes, Shawn
wakes up as Uncle Vanya.
Let me just repeat, however, before I
begin to discuss the results of Gregory/Malle’s methods—in many ways as far
away from “method” acting as you can get, but a “method,” nonetheless that
attempts to get to “the heart of things” and a kind of “realistic” acting
style—that I actually like theater-acting and don’t at all mind a
theatrically-conceived production. But then, I also love opera, melodrama, and
even over-the-top camp theater. The very idea that we have to chew the play
down to the bone to get to the everyday-ness of the playwright’s meanings
seems, to me, to be utter nonsense. Chekov, like Ibsen, and hundreds of other playwrights
before and since, meant their works to be staged imitations of life, not actual
representations of what life might be or have been. I’ll go with Wilde any day:
theater is not real life, and that’s what makes it so illuminative and
marvelous. Unhappy families who, as Tolstoy argues always lead to a different
kind of life, are not necessarily any more interesting than “happy” ones;
they’re just different. And they have little to do, most of the time, with
everyday life. I like beautiful people on a stage, nicely lit, beautifully
designed, saying things that you might not hear in your ordinary experience.
And sometimes these strange and unordinary goings-on say more about what we
might define as “truth” than any “real-life” revelation might tell us.
Nonetheless, there’s something to be said
for Gregory’s method, caught on screen in Malle’s excellent filming, for the
actors to get so comfortable in their parts that they’re not afraid of being
truly boring. In fact, all of Chekhov’s figures in Uncle Vanya (and some of his other plays) are precisely that, absolutely
boring figures who go about pretending that they are something other, not only
to others, but to themselves. Certainly the awkward, Sonya (Brooke Smith),
daughter of the “great” art scholar/thinker, is precisely that. She has
beautiful hair and nice eyes, so she is told, but men—particularly the neighbor
she loves, Dr. Astov (Larry Pine)—while enjoying her presence, basically ignore
her, not even perceiving that she might have deep emotions within.
Her uncle, with whom she has long lived
alone as the caretakers of the house in which they live, like almost all of
Shawn’s characters (as recognizable now as Woody Allen) is a shrill whiner, a
kind of nebbish who might have been but will never be, a man of some interest
and worth. I say this, recognizing all of Shawn’s immense talents as both a
playwright and actor of both film and stage. Shawn, as a real individual, I can
assure you, is an utterly fascinating intellect. But, at least in his
Gregory-directed productions, he generally plays a suffering fool.
Although Astov is represented by all those
around him, particularly the women in this play, as a superior being, a man who
is trying to save nature, and—amazingly far ahead of his own time—attempting to
change the natural world, climate, and human behavior (in creating this
character, Chekhov, at least as translated by David Mamet, seems to have looked
deeply into our own hearts), he is also a kind of pedant, a man who can’t see
his beloved trees for the forest; if nothing else, in his somewhat fatal
attraction to Yelena (Moore) he has missed out in the woman who might most help
him to achieve his goals, Sonya. But she is too modest to attempt to suggest to
him how boorish he truly is, and no one else in this play is strong enough to help
him perceive anything different. As Sonya recognizes, he simply doesn’t see her
as a living being.
The beautiful Yelena, who attracts all the
males, is also recognized by all as so simple-minded that she would sacrifice
her love—and quite willingly—to the elderly Serybryakov (Gaynes). Even she
admits her disinterest, despite the fact that we do perceive her intelligence,
in anything that even begins to seem profound. If she is unhappy in her choice
of lovers, she refuses to give up her commitment, and seems truly to be locked
into the sour relationship to which she has abandoned her soul. While being the
only figure who truly offers something to all the other inhabitants of this
terribly unhappy house, she does absolutely nothing to extricate herself from
her disastrous relationship. And, by play’s end, she leaves her would-be
admirers with little to face in the future. Yet through Moore’s lovely acting,
Yelena is the one who comes most alive in this production.
The worst in this crowd of boorish beings
(figures to whom Chekhov was often attracted) is the so-called genius,
Serbyryakov, to whom both Sonya and Vanya have devoted their lives. Yet,
gradually, as they print out and translate his life’s work—believing always
that he was a man of great insight and intelligence—gradually discover that his
“great” ideas are merely hackneyed responses to others, along with a great deal
of appropriation. When and how they came to that perception is never explained
by the playwright; but by the time Serbyraykov and his wife Yelena have entered
their domain, certainly Vanya has turned from a committed follower into a
bitter cynic about his brother’s genius.
In short, none of this play’s figures can
rise above the mediocrity that was perhaps destined for them. And that is the
real tragedy of the work, which Gregory’s method of wearing his actors down,
illuminates. Like Shawn in the very first scene, they all seem desperately
tired of even living; certainly they are tired of one another’s company. in
other productions, with more authoritative acting, we might possibly think that
Vanya, Astrov, or even Serbyryakov might still rouse themselves into something
of greatness. Perhaps even Sonya might, through her suffering, redeem the
others. But Gregory makes it clear that the only hope these characters have is
their acceptance of their sad conditions and the illusions they might still be
able to maintain.
In the end, however, Malle’s very lovely
movie, his last before his death, also seems tired, full of people so filled
with ennui—despite their obvious talents—that they cannot even fully illuminate
their characters. Gregory sought out the characters’ boringness so fully, that
the play, despite memorable moments, cannot quite rouse itself into a full
theatrical event. Yes, it’s very every day, but is it truly like us?
Finally, what seemed most to be missing in
this production, was Chekhov’s sense of humor. These are all, in one sense or
another, comic figures, failed human beings not because of their boredom or
boorishness but because of their illusions. Does Serbyraykov really believe he
is a great thinker anymore? Is Yelena truly convinced that she is still in
love? Is Astrov actually convinced that his forest is more real than the human
beings he keeps seeking out? Does Vanya actually believe he might have had
another calling, another life? Is Sonya so convinced of her invisibility that
she cannot even see the value of her own life? Yes, I would argue, the
characters are all fools—just like the rest of us—but need they also be tired
boors?
Los Angeles, May
8, 2017
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