Review of Uncle Vanya at the Lantern Theatre

In his 1994 The Western Canon, Yale professor Harold Bloom catalogued the great literary works of Western Civilization since Dante. He capped his near-1,000 year progression with Tony Kushner’s two-part Angels in America, deeming it the last work fit for inclusion.

 

The original productions of Angels garnered multiple Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. Its current off-Broadway revival at New York’s Signature Theatre Company has critics re-confirming its exalted place in literature.

 

I’ve seen multiple productions of both parts, and until recently, I felt inclined to agree with critical estimation. But then I watched the Lantern Theatre’s production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. While I can still appreciate the epic scope of Kushner’s six-hour Angels, his play nonetheless deals—per its subtitle of a “Gay Fantasia on National Themes”—with problems related to the “Democratic Age” in which Bloom catalogues it. Chekhov’s Vanya, by contrast, confronts the very problem of existence.

 

Fixed locale, timeless problems:

 

Chekhov’s play opens on the Serebryakov estate, most likely in present day Ukraine. However, with few textual exceptions—that call for a samovar and a guitar—Meghan Jones moderately detailed manor could exist in any Western nation.

 

And the problems Chekhov’s characters face feel equally timeless. The arrival of Professor Serebryakov (David Howey) and his young wife Yelena (Sarah Sanford) throws the normal routine of the estate’s denizens into chaos. They work the land and manage the estate’s affairs; he lists about complaining about petty academic struggles and geriatric health complaints.

 

His wife embodies the problems of beautiful women anywhere. Men dote on her, unless she ignores them (in which case they snap), and less attractive females unload the equally unfortunate perils of having their inferior genetic endowments overlooked. Watching Sarah Sanford’s eager eyes attend to everything but the reality of her life, I couldn’t help thinking of Hedda Gabler or Helen of Troy.

 

As the possibility of a more refined and leisurely life intrudes, all other concerns fly out the window. The local Doctor (Charlie DelMarcelle) trades his conservationist lifestyle for long nights of drinking, their neighbor Telegin (David Blatt) ruminates on his past misfortunes, and Serebryakov’s daughter Sonya (Melissa Lynch) pauses long enough from her work to realize that she’s aging, and no man might ever love her.

 

One line that carries them all: 

 

In any production of Vanya, the entire dramatic weight of the play rests on a single line, uttered by the overlooked titular character: “I could have been the next Schopenhauer…the next Dostoyevsky.” I’ve seen other translations which preface that line with “If I had lived a normal life.” Whether or not we agree with Vanya’s outburst depends on how well the actor has set up the line, and how much we view—at any age—the potential application of that sentiment to our own lives.

 

At the Lantern, Peter DeLaurier’s masterful performance balanced Vanya’s buffoonery with both solemnity and a desperate exhaustion at having failed in his own life because he satisfied the expectations of others. DeLaurier shows us Vanya’s intellectual strength (in solidly challenging Serebryakov) while indulging his moral weaknesses and self-pity. And the line, coming as a culmination of such a rich portrayal, evoked both scoffing laughter and my own chilled spine.

 

An existential crisis, averted: 

 

Director Kathryn MacMillan imparts tremendous care into the production, letting the play unfold along the lines of each character’s narrative. No member of the ensemble contributes anything less than a stellar performance. Her and the cast’s depiction of life at the estate transcends its locale, showing even the servants as trusted members of family, equally ready to offer support or rebuke, but unlike Vanya, all equally committed to a desire to solve their problems with a return to routine, even if only the lost status quo.

 

And by giving the production this sense, the Lantern’s production reveals something extraordinary, that Chekhov only achieves with conviction in Vanya. To many, the normal association of “existentialism” implies one of two meanings: the nihilism of Waiting for Godot or the reckless hedonism of Dorian Gray.

 

But Chekhov provided a third option, telling us in Vanya that we can find meaning and alleviate present-day suffering by working toward a better earthly future for those to come. He states this same idea more explicitly in his Three Sisters, but dulls its impact by repeatedly insisting upon it.  

 

At the Lantern, MacMillan and her cast let us feel it as the vital key to their own lives. It doesn’t matter if you accept that in your own life, or pity or hate the characters in Vanya for soldiering on by those lights in theirs.

 

What matters is that this staging possesses a rare quality, where its characters could not just reach across the fourth wall to sit down with us in our own lives, but that we could get up from our chairs and take their places on the stage. And that’s something only a great production of a great play can make you realize.

Review of "Sweetie Pie," published by EDGE Philadelphia

Many playwrights dream of rewriting a Greek tragedy, updating the plot and forces of fate to the conditions of modern life. Adapting the plot becomes a minor problem, altering the characters and storyline to fit contemporary life. The hard part lies in generating a tragic effect-motivating the plot and characters in such a way that the audience experiences a sort of terror and despair at the end of the play.

Yet this is what Philadelphia playwright Madi Distefano attempts in Sweetie Pie-a 21st century punk rock retelling of Sophocles Oedipus (with an early smattering of Romeo and Juliet to kick start the action).

In Sweetie Pie, seventeen-year old lovers Joey (Tobias Segal) and Barbara (Melissa Lynch) inhabit the same precocious world of their contemporaries, with a slight twist: she’s the rebellious daughter of a rich, powerful (corporate? mafia?) tyrant, he’s a runaway living in an abandoned warehouse in Metro City. Strangely enough, she’s still concerned enough about Joey’s future to insist that he get a job to support her-after all, she’s pregnant-but not so pregnant as to take hits off a pipe (crack? pot?) in between her persistent nagging.

Nonetheless, they’re both smart enough to realize that what they’ve found is The Real Thing, and they make a vow, cutting, then tying their wrists together to exchange blood in a pledge to always stay together. Dad (Tom Tansey) finds out, locks Babs in the basement for nine months, has the baby disposed of, and gives Joey ten grand to leave town on a funded, though permanent exile. Joey leaves reluctantly, reciting his pledge to find Barbara again and live out their lives together.

Of course, this is where the problem begins: no one believes in vows (or believes that others will uphold them) enough to maintain them over thousands of miles and two decades, especially when you never hear from the guy again. And sure enough, sixteen years later (a very awkward, poorly effected transition), Barbara, now Bebe (Distefano), has grown into a minor local punk rock celebrity, attracting runaways as groupies, and moving on with her life, at least where new lovers are concerned.

One of these young hangers-on is Mark (Segal, double-cast), who, in classic Oedipal style, falls for this idealized version of womanhood (for him at least), and when she rebuffs him, he (through sheer passion, since that’s how it’s done, of course), masters the guitar and wins her admiration in due course. Bebe takes him under her wings, produces his first album into a huge success, he becomes the type of famous she always wanted for herself, and half the Oedipal prophesy (never made in Sweetie Pie though) comes true-as the son’s now sleeping with his mom.

Meanwhile, Joey (Tansey, also double cast), roams the land, writing songs and performing self-deprecating open mic night comedy about how miserable he is without the young girl he still loves. Eventually, he straggles back to Metro City, and encounters Bebe on a fire escape outside a club. She spurns him for leaving, he accosts her for going on without him, and Mark witnesses the tail end of it, enraged enough to fulfill part two, and make his way down the iron railing to knife his (unbeknownst to him) father.

An investigative journalist pries too deeply into events, uncovers Mark’s past (abandonment in a trashcan), and Bebe begins to put two-and-two together (which still requires the ad hoc device of a dream to become wholly clear). Though able to cope with a life of frustrated ambition, she nonetheless kills herself during a concert, at the subconscious suggestion (no proof) that she’s, well, with her son. Mark races in, sees the corpse, and having enough (of this play?), gouges his eyes out to see no more.

Faithful to the plot? Absolutely, and a brilliant updating at that, intriguing and capturing my attention throughout-though mostly to see how Distefano pulled off all of Sophocles elements (and I loved seeing her well-integrated chorus in a modern play).

Entertaining? Wildly so at times, and terrifically funny, especially whenever Tom Tansey wandered across the stage, either picking born-to-lose fights with drunks, or performing (if that’s the right word) songs about the emptiness of his life without Barbara. Moreover, Lynch gives the very image of bulldog-like tenacity in her teenage rebel, and Segal’s Young Joey is humorously pathetic enough in his whiny playing against her.

But tragic? Unfortunately not. Too much tongue-in-cheek humor spoiled the tragedy, the one aspect I thought Distefano was really shooting for in her play. There’s nothing wrong with laughing at misery on stage, half of the theatre (comedy) is predicated on that notion. However, Distefano’s play, and John Clancy’s direction failed to make an overall tragedy out of the script.

(Which is why I couldn’t treat this review any differently than I did.)

If only both of them had taken this play either more seriously (or less so). Clancy could have succeeded far more in engendering an overall tragic effect if he had treated the material with greater sincerity-not leaving out the comedy, but not letting it become over-the-top either. Clearly, he could’ve gotten more out of Distefano’s portrayal of Bebe as well. She does a great job muddling her response while playing a woman strung out on booze and Xanex, but by not displaying real emotions when faced with Joey’s death (or even in her envy of Mark’s success), she lessens the impact of her play’s tragic attempt.

Great use of language dominates the script, both in the individual actor’s lines (Barbara’s Father threatening young Joey by spitting out, "you will pay the price of being a teenage boy with a cock"), and in the chorus, who describe events as "burning like hot cum on a whore’s stomach."

But the language never translates into tragedy either-for which some loss, or sense of inevitability, or set of decisions that could’ve been altered but weren’t, is necessary. Along the way, Distefano tries to insert at least four different attempts at this into her script, but they’re either inconsistent or underdeveloped, no matter how poignantly written or well effected by the chorus.

For whatever it is, Sweetie Pie isn’t a tragedy. Someone has to care, or see themselves in these people for that to happen. In Sophocles version, he almost made it easy for himself-picking an adored King in time of crisis, blinded only by his overly confident arrogance toward the world. When a Greek audience saw that the gods laid low someone so noble, using him almost for sport in the fulfillment of fate, there was reason for everyone in the audience to feel terror and woe.

However, in Sweetie Pie, Distefano chose a pair of junkies, inhabiting a subterranean offshoot of what’s already a marginal subculture. Certainly, people identify with their story-particularly the young lover episode that began her play. But she develops no real sense of loss, has it played poorly by both herself and Segal (as Mark), and litters the script with too many jokes. In the end, the notion that Joey’s, Mark’s, and Barbara’s lives constitute a tragedy falls far too short of believability