#26
Posted: 4/8/24 at 5:00pm
I very much enjoyed the Cate Blanchett production at NY City Center. Richard Roxburgh was excellent.
UNCLE VANYA Previews — Page 2
#27
Posted: 4/8/24 at 5:44pm
Okay but what about the production currently in previews that this thread is dedicated to?
#28
Posted: 4/8/24 at 7:19pm
People really need to stop getting bent out of shape over discussions in these threads not being wholly about the production in the first week or two of performances before a critical mass of members have had the opportunity to actually see the show. When more folks see it, they will weigh in and the conversation will shift.
"...everyone finally shut up, and the audience could enjoy the beginning of the Anatevka Pogram in peace."
#30
Posted: 4/9/24 at 5:39pm
FYI, there are some orchestra seats for tonight in row O of the 100s and 500s that are (mis?)-marked at $48. I'm assuming they were wheelchair and companion seats, but they left them at the accessible rate when they converted them to standard.
Updated On: 4/9/24 at 05:39 PM
#32
Posted: 4/10/24 at 12:01am
Went to see Uncle Vanya on a student ticket tonight (I'd like to give HUGE thumbs up for that box office operator who gave me row O seat 300's, that's the best view I've ever had on a student rush!) and I'm completely unfamiliar with Chekov but certainly enjoyed it. Sonya's actress was acting her HEART out on that stage, one of the best play performances I've seen this season outside of Appropriate. Carell does a great job of portraying a bitter Vanya, and compliments the rest of the cast perfectly. His emotional highlights worked well for me, though he already went into this with great reviews from his work on TV (which I'm equally unfamiliar with). I think this worked very well and I really enjoyed the set design and staging of act one, without getting into spoilers the effects were great for a play. I think it was a worthy night out for sure! Also, all of the Beaumont staff were amazing and helpful. Respectful audience, besides the person who let their phone ring for a full minute during a relatively quiet scene.
#33
Posted: 4/10/24 at 12:59am
Interesting. I thought the women were the weaker performances. For me, Carell and Harper were the standouts. I thought Pill was fine, I could not figure out what age her character was supposed to be, at times she seemed like a young teen, others mid twenties, and Anika Noni Rose, unfortunately, was the weakest of the night. Her character did not earn her moments and her performance didn’t leave much of an impact. For what should have felt like a pivotal character, she kind of just disappeared in the show.
Overall, I really enjoyed the production, the scene change in act one was stunning. Act Two starts with way too much furniture onstage. An unnecessary amount, which made the act two scene change a little less impactful as there were so many stage hands removing furniture around the actors,
Im glad your part of the audience was good. Is was right behind a group that came in late, talked loudly, and texted for an extended period.
Updated On: 4/10/24 at 12:59 AM
#34
Posted: 4/10/24 at 3:20am
willep said: "Interesting. I thought the women were the weaker performances. For me, Carell and Harper were the standouts. I thought Pill was fine, I could not figure out what age her character was supposed to be, at times she seemed like a young teen, others mid twenties, and Anika Noni Rose, unfortunately, was the weakest of the night. Her character did not earn her moments and her performance didn’t leave much of an impact. For what should have felt like a pivotal character, she kind of just disappeared in the show.
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I do agree on Anika Rose's performance. I don't think she's usually a stage actress, but in any case the others definitely outshined her.
Im glad your part of the audience was good. Is was right behind a group that came in late, talked loudly, and texted for an extended period."
Was that the group in around row L of the 100's? I thought they left for act two, I barely noticed them other than when it was like 6-7 people all walking in after the first scene. Sad to hear the ushers weren't as vigilant over there!
#35
Posted: 4/10/24 at 7:54am
The entire play takes place over one summer, it starts in late spring/early summer and ends in autumn.
Anika Noni Rose is a Tony award winning actress, I thought she was known primarily for theatre, albeit musical theatre, but I could be wrong.
Yeah, I was right behind that group in the 100s. We considered moving to some open seats in L in the 300s at intermission, but then it looked like someone had thought of that before us, so we moved a bit away from them in our own section for the second act.
Like I said, overall really enjoyed the show, just thought some scenes lacked some nuance/color, which I think is a combination of some performances and this script adaptation.
Also of note, the runtime online says 2 hours and 45, but last night it ended at about 10:30 after starting a few minutes after 8.
#36
Posted: 4/10/24 at 1:26pm
dearalanaaaa said: "Went to see Uncle Vanya on a student ticket tonight (I'd like to give HUGE thumbs up for that box office operator who gave me row O seat 300's, that's the best view I've ever had on a student rush!) and I'm completely unfamiliar with Chekov but certainly enjoyed it. Sonya's actresswas acting her HEART out on that stage, one of the best play performances I've seen this season outside of Appropriate. Carell does a great job of portraying a bitter Vanya, and compliments the rest of the cast perfectly. His emotional highlights worked well for me, though he already went into this with great reviews from his work on TV (which I'm equally unfamiliar with). I think this worked very well and I really enjoyed the set design and staging of act one, without getting into spoilers the effects were great for a play. I think it was a worthy night out for sure! Also, all of the Beaumont staff were amazing and helpful. Respectful audience, besides the person who let their phone ring for a full minute during a relatively quiet scene."
Alison Pill (Sonya) was the surprise star for me too! My high school daughter is now obsessed with this play and the Sonya monologues - and Alison! Steve Carell and William Harper Jackson were wonderful too, but I expected nothing less from them.
Updated On: 4/10/24 at 01:26 PM
#37
Posted: 4/10/24 at 4:07pm
I would love to hear what some women and enby people think about Anika Noni Rose's performance of Yelena, having seen her in most of her Broadway performances, and giving that little thing called a Tony Award, I have never thought she was bad onstage. I wonder if this is direction and also the fact that Yelena feels like an inconsequential character in her own life, by the end of the play...I am excited to see it and looking forward to other reviews.
#38
Posted: 4/11/24 at 1:51am
I thought William Jackson Harper gave the most engaging performance of the evening. He was charismatic and interesting to watch. He will be in line for a Tony nomination. One very minor costume note would be to scruff up his boots.
Some of the scene work felt a little flat and I felt some of the speaking cues needed to be picked up. It was like the actors at times got caught up in the tone of the play which in turn robbed them of their energy. At times the performances slipped into every word is important acting. I did think that the themes were very strong. I just wanted to be more invested emotionally. This is a production that will grow through previews. The director needs to go back and work through the beats in the scene work and it will eliminate the flatness and strengthen the character’s relationships.
#39
Posted: 4/11/24 at 7:50am
I thought Anika Noni Rose was superb in Caroline, or Change (justly deserving of her Tony) and in A Raisin in the Sun. On the other hand, I thought she was a weak link in the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof revival and really couldn't command the stage in a non-singing, leading role. I'm seeing this next weekend so am curious to hear the early reports.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
#40
Posted: 4/12/24 at 8:45am
Saw this last night and...
This is a VANYA for EVERYONE!
If you like modern family comedy, you'll enjoy William Jackson Harper and Steve Carell's performances. If you like classic Chekhov, you'll appreciate Alfred Molina. If you like a little bit of both, you'll applaud Allison Pill and Anika Noni Rose.
Why are all of these in the same production, though? That's a great question.
This was, tonally, all over the place for me. I found it most successful when it leaned into the modern family comedy side of things (Harper gave, by far, my favorite performance of the night). In those scenes, I thought, "hey, a witty contemporary take on Vanya with some modern climate politics thrown in? I can roll with that". But then Alfred Molina strode onto the stage, and suddenly the production felt 100 years old.
The parts I liked I liked a lot. But I left the show really confused. And most of the fun is in Act One. I can't recommend this to anyone, but wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing it. *shrug*
#41
Posted: 4/12/24 at 3:16pm
Can anyone attest to what rush and lottery seats are?
or am I better waiting for an extension to see if they add more linctix (what seats were those anyway and any good?)
#42
Posted: 4/13/24 at 8:07pm
I saw last night's performance and thought it was very good. As is often the case, though, the update detracts from the play.
For example, when Chekhov wrote Uncle Vanya in the late 19th Century, Dr. Astrov (well-played by Harper) was way ahead of his time in his environmental advocacy. So, it made sense when other characters looked at him as "weird" or "original." However, moved to the present day, his lecturing is commonplace and even cliched, which seriously undermines what should be an important contrast between him and the others.
Also, if this is the present day, why don't any of these people who feel bored and isolated pull out their cellphones? Why does one character complain that he could have been a Schopenhauer, and another compare what's happening around her to a sentimental novel? The answer is, I think, that the play hasn't really been updated but rather removed from any recognizable reality, either past or present.
Still, nearly the whole cast is strong and will undoubtedly be even better by opening. I was especially impressed by Hadary and Katigbak as Waffles and Marina, characters who, in previous productions, haven't made much of an impact on me (apart perhaps from mild annoyance).
#43
Posted: 4/16/24 at 1:04am
When you say "updated" do you mean modern dress or does the text make contemporary allusions as well? In Jamie Lloyd's A Doll's House, for example, the actors all wore contemporary clothing but text was projected on the back wall reading "1879"--implying that while the actors were dressed in modern clothing, the show was still set in another period (like how nobody in Chicago wears period-appropriate attire but we understand very clearly what decade we are in through other cues). Does the text imply that this production is fully set today, or do you think they're using contemporary costumes in a period world?
I've seen Chekhov work in modern dress (Vanya on 42nd Street), but I do think going full period--corsets and all--usually offers a level of constraint that actors find it useful to push against.
It does not surprise me to hear the complaint that the actors all feel in different worlds--that was one of my biggest complaints about last summer's production with David Cromer and Marin Ireland, and a frequent problem I have with Chekhov productions. He wrote for an ensemble that had worked together for years and years and knew each other's rhythms so well. It can be hard to build those relationships and a common working style in the brief rehearsal periods we have in the American theatre.
#44
Posted: 4/16/24 at 10:53am
It was updated in all ways - there was a record player used onstage, the language included "booze" and "bucks" (instead of money/cash).
#45
Posted: 4/16/24 at 11:16am
It felt to me like the point was that it could be happening in any time, which worked for me.
#46
Posted: 4/17/24 at 11:12am
Tom-497 said: "I saw last night's performance and thought it was very good. As is often the case, though, the update detracts from the play.
For example, when Chekhov wrote Uncle Vanya in the late 19th Century, Dr. Astrov (well-played by Harper) was way ahead of his time in his environmental advocacy. So, it made sense when other characters looked at him as "weird" or "original." However, moved to the present day, his lecturing is commonplace and even cliched, which seriously undermines what should be an important contrast between him and the others.
Also, if this is the present day, why don't any of these people who feel bored and isolated pull out their cellphones? Why does one character complain that he could have been a Schopenhauer, and another compare what's happening around her to a sentimental novel? The answer is, I think, that the play hasn't really been updated but rather removed from any recognizable reality, either past or present.
Still, nearly the whole cast is strong and will undoubtedly be even better by opening. I was especially impressed by Hadary and Katigbak as Waffles and Marina, characters who, in previous productions, haven't made much of an impact on me (apart perhaps from mild annoyance)."
Not everyone who is bored today uses a cellphone.
#47
Posted: 4/18/24 at 1:01am
It looks like you enjoyed a lot there. All the best!
#48
Posted: 4/18/24 at 4:45pm
they're selling opening night tickets (april 24th).
#49
Posted: 4/19/24 at 12:39am
The characters in Uncle Vanya frequently bring up how bored they are...and so was I. This was without a doubt the biggest disappointment of the season for me.
I cannot fathom how the same person who directed the crackling Appropriate also turned in this production. Every single actor is in a completely different show. Pacing draaaaaags along. Especially at the end where I nearly pleaded out loud for the scene to cut to black already and for Astrov to leave. Carrell injects some much needed life into the play with his moments in Act 1, but sadly his big Act 2 moment for Vanya completely falls apart (his voice gets difficult to listen to with all that yelling, the only point where you can tell he isn't used to being on stage as the yelling is completely unsupported. and then when he gets on the table? A completely unearned moment). I have no idea what age Alison Pill is supposed to be. It seems like she is working so hard to "act young." Rose felt like she just decided to not make any acting choices for most of the play. Perhaps it was her way of playing "bored" but we just done get a sense of the characters inner life or driving forces. And holy moly the scene change after Vanya's entrance with the gun...stage crew coming on to move furniture...from the same company that flew a damn ship across the same stage for The King and I?...while the entire cast does an impression of that Homer Simpson meme sliding back into the bushes in slow motion. Yikes. There was no sense of time or place, no sense of any stakes whatsoever, no pacing, and really no central directorial idea for the play at all. This was sadly an enormous miss for me.
Updated On: 4/19/24 at 12:39 AM
#50
Posted: 4/20/24 at 9:35am
Selling 1 ticket mezzanine row E. 500 section for today's performance 4/20 at 2pm.
$60
PM me. Paypal only. Thx!
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