The Theater: The Old Vic: Part II

On sack and ale they had nourished: opening on Broadway in Shakespeare’s Henry IV (TIME, May 20), England’s Old Vic seemed lustily alive. But vodka was not quite their drink; and in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya last week the Old Vic did some noticeable stumbling.

The trouble was twofold: they had neither chosen too wisely nor performed too well. Playing Chekhov in another language must always discolor him a little; and to offer U.S. audiences a perceptibly British version of Chekhov is to discolor him further. Moreover, the reserved and chin-up British are not entirely at home with the soul and the samovar.

Where the Old Vic pre-eminently caught Shakespeare’s spirit in Henry IV, in Uncle Vanya they only fitfully captured Chekhov’s tone. The direction seemed fussy in some places, off-center in others; two or three roles were misplayed, and in the title role Ralph Richardson, though always a good actor, seemed miscast.

Potshots and Self-Pity. A typical Chekhov study of frustration, the play is over, in a sense, before it starts: all that is left to most of its people is recriminations and regrets. A selfish mediocrity whose family pampered him and thought him great, Professor Serebryakou is peevish now for having got nowhere, for having got old. Middleaged, rust-covered Vanya —who has sacrificed his life to the professor and declared too late his love for the professor’s shallow, pretty wife—wallows in self-pity, and when finally roused to rage takes potshots at the professor—and misses.

The drama of these people is that they have recoiled from drama, are unfit for drama—can only poke around in the cupboard of memories and might-have-been. That, too, is the pathos of them. But it is a pathos that Chekhov sharply rings with humor and partly punctures with insight. Always compassionate, he is never deceived. The wand he waves to evoke moods suddenly becomes a scalpel that lays motives bare. He sees all that is flabby—and all that is funny—in these people who make mournfulness their métier.