Old Souls

A new production of Uncle Vanya brings the eternal wisdom of Anton Chekhov to the stage.

- Adrienne Miller

On a late winter morning, the cast of the new production of Uncle Vanya, starring Steve Carell and directed by Lila Neugebauer, begins to arrive at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York’s Lincoln Center. The actors— Carell, Alfred Molina, Anika Noni Rose, William Jackson Harper, Alison Pill, Jayne Houdyshell, Mia Katigbak, and Jonathan Hadary—had recently assembled for a read-through of the script, a new adaptation by Heidi Schreck of the Anton Chekhov masterwork, but this morning’s gathering for Vogue marks the true beginning of their journey together. They loiter around a catering table and introduce themselves. Rehearsals begin tomorrow and the play opens in April.

“A great director, a great translation, and a classic play, those three things,” says Carell, are what drew him to Vanya. “The play also feels current and speaks to human behavior that hasn’t changed in a hundred years,” he adds. “Chekhov nails down the essence of how human beings think, and talk, and react, and feel the life around them.”

Uncle Vanya is indeed an astonishingly modern play, with its meditations on money, class, work, the environment, and masculinity. But it’s also profoundly human in its themes: the finitude of life, lost dreams, and unrequited love. It cuts so deeply because “the dilemmas are of the heart, and completely comprehensible,” says Hadary, the veteran New York stage actor who plays Waffles. “They are not characters in a play. They’re people. They’re us.” Carell concurs: “They’re just so specifically drawn that they feel absolutely real and lived-in.” He pauses, gathering his thoughts on the playwright. “I mean, the guy was a genius.”