Uncle Vanya, St James Theatre - review: Anya Reiss brings Chekhov bang up to date

The third of Anya Reiss’ versions of Chekhov sees the young playwright once again bringing him bang up to date. We’re in a rural, northern farmstead, though there’s enough signal for mobile phones and iPads; there are no samovars here, however, and the tea's gone cold.

Written in a brisk modern idiom, Reiss finds Chekhov's wit, even silliness, amongst the ennui of a dysfunctional family and friends. Everyone is so “trapped and bored and tired” they’re metaphorically climbing the walls, and literally sprawling and sighing over furniture and the floor. But the script successfully teeters on that fine line between tragedy and farce: Sonya, overcome with unrequited love, bashes her face fully down into a bag of crisps in despair; Vanya’s explosion of pent up rage at his own underachievement is bathetic in the extreme (“I could have been a Nobel prize winner! … a TS Eliot, a George Eliot!”)

Vanya is played by John Hannah (still best known for Four Weddings and a Funeral) with a chattering belligerence - accused of being “mardy” by his own mother - that spews forth in sarcasm. He nails the bitterness of the man who may have wasted his life but loves to hold forth about it after a drink or two. His shoulder-chip is mysterious, however, to the privileged plummy Professor who he’s worked to help for so many years. There’s a real class divide in this interpretation too, adding to the madcap but ultimately vastly sad miscommunication between the working folk on the farm and the scholarly professor and his well-spoken, much-younger wife Yelena.

Director Russell Bolam’s interpretation of her part is sympathetic; Rebecca Knight plays her as sweet, genuine, mild. She may be eye-rollingly frustrated by their back-water life, but she’s not the manipulative sexpot of some interpretations. And even the required age gap between her and the Professor seems stretched - Knight looks very young; described as “a carer” for her doddery, difficult husband, it seems an accurate description. When he claims he’ll soon be shuffling off this mortal coil, it seems likely rather than a sign of hypochondria. This is an implausibly icky union.

We pity her as she tries to satisfy his grumbling demands, or when he won’t let her even play the guitar (beginning to strum, thematically perfectly, Radiohead’s ‘Fake Plastic Trees’). No wonder she’d be attracted by the handsome local doctor… Joe Dixon stands out in this role, an eccentric smoothie in jazzy shirts, his tone teasingly jovial even as he despairs - and he gives ver, ver good drunk…

There is, perhaps, too much irritable angst, rather than deep anguish, and nor does it seem as zingily fresh as her take on The Seagull. But Reiss’ updating largely works and makes for a satisfying modern Vanya.