Theatre review: Uncle Vanya – but there’s ASMR soap cutting videos playing in the bottom right corner
In one of the most creative – and certainly the most madcap – productions currently showing in Adelaide, director Mary Angley and her team of collaborators tackle Chekhov’s classic Uncle Vanya with the attention span of a TikTok influencer and the outrageous spectacle of a wrestling match.
When retired university professor Aleksandre returns to the rural estate of his late first wife, accompanied by his second wife – the captivating and much younger Yelena – he’s not there for the tea or the vodka. He has come to tell his daughter Sonya (from his first marriage) and Vanya (his late wife’s brother) that he and Yelena are selling the estate, of which they – Aleksandre and Yelena – will be the beneficiaries. It’s especially bad news for Sonya and Vanya, as the estate is their home. That is the authentic telling of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, first produced in 1899 at the Moscow Art Theatre. This production, presented at AC Arts by Adelaide’s Paper Mouth Theatre, offers a progressively twisted version.
Chekhov is one of history’s most important playwrights. His plays are moody and his dialogue superb, and if you don’t know his work, you’ll probably know his famous take on symbolism and props: if there’s a gun in Act One, it’d better go off before the end of Act Four. True to form, there is a gun in Uncle Vanya – but there’s ASMR soap cutting videos playing in the bottom right corner, and boy does it go off.
Chekhov is clearly highbrow, if only for the fact that his plays have been considered classics since the last World War. But is his work accessible to the younger generations? Deciding it’s too risky to introduce Gen Zs to Vanya in a traditional way, Paper Mouth Theatre have taken a different route.
As the director explains in lieu of Act II, life is too short and the play is too long to properly impose Chekhov’s ‘dramaturgical structures’ on an audience that’s likely busy thinking about the cost of living, cancer-causing microplastics in their bodies and whatever’s currently scrolling on their feed. Enlisting the audience to help decide whether a monologue is going on for too long, this play doesn’t run the risk of sending anyone to sleep, or to their phone.
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The director – and also Professor Aleksandre – is Mary Angley, whose solo show Grief Lightning: A Satire in 78 Slides sticks out in my memory as an all-time Adelaide Fringe favourite. In it, she used PowerPoint to explain her theory on ‘Sandy in a coma’. I’m happy to say, without giving too much away, she still likes PowerPoints.
How to explain, without taking away the joy of discovery, the many clever ways this Uncle Vanya interprets that Uncle Vanya, and how cackle-worthy the show is? Actors Poppy Mee (Psychopomp) and Yoz Mensch (My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me on Instagram) deliver strong performances in the classical way of diaphragm-centred and diction-perfect technique, and they really show off their talents for lengthy stage whispers and TikTok dance (hats off to choreographer Felicity Boyd for the latter). Yelena – who has been played by Julie Christie, Laura Linney, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Cate Blanchett – has never seen the likes of Lucy Haas and Arran Beattie.
Most of the time, Ellen Graham’s depiction of Sonya brings us down to Earth in a show that can sometimes feel like a parallel universe explosion – until the moment she reveals kneepads under her serf skirt, and unleashes the pro wrestler within. Dan Thorpe as Waffles is also the play’s sound designer and live onstage pianist, gifting us background music to match the digital backdrop of glitchy trees swaying in the wind. If the show sounds hectic, it is, and it isn’t. ‘Hectic’ means there’s a lot going on, but the word tends to carry the weight of negativity – of ‘too much’. This show, however, showers the audience with just the right amount of positivity, even (and especially) in the final scene, where Chekhov’s closing words are nothing if not bleak. Here, I can’t ignore Bianka Kennedy’s use of paper mâché. It’s pure magic.
Presented as part of the State Theatre Company South Australia’s Spark program – an initiative showcasing gutsy, genre-transforming theatre – Uncle Vanya – but there’s ASMR soap cutting videos playing in the bottom right corner is outrageously imaginative in its all-in approach to script adaptation, with the cast of performers working as co-plotters. It’s a downright queering of Chekhov’s play in a very modern way. But as a warning to die-hard, traditionalist theatregoers who have skim-read the play’s full title, this might not be the ticket for you – you may walk away rather confused.
Uncle Vanya – but there’s ASMR soap cutting videos playing in the bottom right corner continues at Adelaide College of the Arts until July 18, presented by Paper Mouth Theatre and State Theatre Company South Australia
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