Andrew Scott as Vanya. Photo: Julieta Cervantes
Certain shows ought to come with a genre warning. If you opt to see Andrew Scott’s one-man Vanya (a ticket so hot, it sold out in advance), brace yourself for a jape rather than in depth-character study. Co-devised with dramatist Simon Stephens, director Sam Yates, and designer Rosanna Vize, Vanya-sans-Uncle is an exceedingly loose, flippant adaptation designed to showcase Scott’s chameleonic chops.
Scott does indeed prove impressively mercurial as he leaps from role to role: eight in all, including a few you’ve probably forgotten. It’s an impressive feat, but on the bloodless side. If you’re still reeling from Jay O. Sanders’s coronary-inducing portrayal at the Hunter Theater Project seven years ago, you’re bound to come away feeling rooked, possibly even offended.
This version leans heavily toward parody. In lieu of a terminally depressed, prematurely aging plow horse, we get Vanya as a puerile jerk given to mocking people behind their backs. He punctuates scenes with a joke shop device that spits out comedic sound effects (e.g., a wolf whistle; canned laughter).
Scott is indisputably a genius as quick-change transformations. He doesn’t even need to go behind the free-standing door plunked center stage: a mere blink and the switch is apparent. He’s especially effective when portraying Vanya’s mooching ex-brother-in-law, here no mere retired professor but a full-of-himself, out-of-fashion film director, or as Alexander would have it, pompously, “a man of film.” (Is this Scott exacting actorly revenge on directors past?)
Scott’s women, though, are sketchy, superficially limned. Sonya is a dish-towel-clutching simp, and the beautiful cipher Helena, ID’d by the necklace she obsessively strokes, is accorded way too much stage time and influence on the plot as radically compressed..
As for Sonya’s closing speech, a benediction guaranteed to put one’s heart in a vice? She just natters on into the night.
Lucille Lortel Theatre, to May 11
NB: The 2023 National Theatre production is viewable by subscription online: Vanya