THEATRE REVIEW: SOUNDING VANYA

Rehaan Engineer
2 hrs, 30 minutes
Kalki Koechlin, Ira Dubey, Abir Abrar, Anna Ador
English
3 stars
Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s 120-year-old play Uncle Vanya is dissected by a pianist and a group of actors, who interrogate, dismantle and rebuild it. The plot revolves around an elderly professor, Serebryakov, his much younger second wife, Yelena, and the caretakers of the estate Vanya and Dr Astrov, who fall under the latter’s spell.
In Rehaan Engineer’s experimental dismantling and retelling of Chekhov’s 120-year-old text, an all-female cast sits around a table, describing the scenario at the time and enacting the play. Israeli musician Guy Hershberg plays the piano, ukulele and cello as the plot unfolds. Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya is set in a rural estate in Russia, somewhere in the 1890s. There is despair, midlife malaise and simmering anger over lost opportunities. Climate change, a subject that Dr Astrov seems very fond of, is bound to touch a chord with everyone. But, as Chekhov himself wrote to his brother, in a letter that Ira Dubey reads out to the audience, it is love that is at the heart of everything. While it is Vanya’s unrequited love for Yelena (Professor Serebryakov’s second wife) which is in focus, it is through Sonya (the professor’s daughter from his first wife, who pines for Dr Astrov) that the message of hope and faith is delivered when she says, ‘You’ve had no joy in your life; but wait, uncle Vanya, wait... we shall rest’.
The all-female cast deserves a special mention for delivering a riveting performance as the actors seamlessly slip into different characters. They get in and out of costumes — often mid-scene, a clever technique that enables each actor to play every role in the play. The music by Guy and the live singing, delivered beautifully by Meher Mistry, lend a melancholic touch to the proceedings that build to a crescendo in the third act and simmer down in the fourth and last act.
The tragicomedy leaves one with a sense of loneliness, which seems to have become a hallmark of modern times. The universality of Chekhov’s writing finds resonance in the idea of daily struggles, finding that love often results in pain, yet hope floats.