ondon theatregoers have recognized for years there’s far more to Andrew Scott than Sherlock’s Moriarty and Fleabag’s scorching priest, however this one-man Vanya is a revelation and a sensation. Author Simon Stephens transposes Chekhov’s tragicomedy to a 20th-century Irish farm: the story and the pathos is preserved, the characters forged in a brand new gentle.
Scott performs all of them, differentiating women and men, younger and outdated, with slight adjustments of vocal register and physique language. His efficiency is wry, confiding, typically archly humorous, briefly very attractive and generally wrenchingly unhappy. It’s a masterclass in actorly talent, in tone and pacing. Scott, Stephens, director Sam Yates and designer Rosanna Vize all have equal billing as co-creators.
Scott ambles onto a brightly lit, scumbled set dotted with tables, chairs, a piano and a kitchen sink, and smirks at us whereas turning the home lights off, on, then off once more. We’re made complicit: later he’ll handle us straight or roll his eyes at some plot level or character Chekhov or Stephens has uncared for. For now, he lights a cigarette and immediately he’s housekeeper Maureen, flirting with visiting physician Michael.
Some information of the unique is beneficial, although Stephens replicates its craving dynamics faithfully. Downtrodden Vanya (right here renamed Ivan) and his niece Sonya slave on the household potato farm to help her pompous film-maker father, Alexander: Sonya’s mom was Vanya’s late, beloved sister, and the farm was her dowry. Now Sonya loves charismatic, self-destructive Physician Michael “greater than my very own father and mom”: she bites a dishtowel in disgrace as she says this.
The physician and Ivan each covet Alexander’s glamorous, languorous second spouse, Helena. Solely certainly one of them is briefly requited, in a scene that sees Scott claw his personal short-sleeved linen shirt off to surprisingly erotic impact. He evokes the feminine characters with nice subtlety – Helena simply by the way in which he toys with a sequence round his neck. The whispered, passionate moments are so spellbinding I didn’t dare ease my stiff hip.
Some technical enterprise that works brilliantly on stage will sound terrible when described right here. Vanya is initially recognized by his sun shades and a handheld system that makes cartoon sound results, Sonya by that dishtowel, as an illustration.
However Scott and Yates have a cinematic nostril for adjustments in focus and perspective. As Physician Michael, Scott chugs vodka with vehement self-loathing: then, alchemically, he turns into Sonya, seeing within the empty bottle that she’s misplaced him. When Ivan is lastly stirred to anger towards Alexander, Scott truly appears to be like like two totally different folks.
Okay, when he sits on the ground and sings Jaques Brel’s If You Go Away, invention threatens to tip into tricksiness. However this present isn’t a conceit venture, a gimmick or a rip-off of Chekhov: it’s a distillation of his compassion and humanity that creates one thing new. Stephens, Yates and Vize deserve huge kudos; however it’s Scott’s mercurial expertise that makes it transfixing.
Duke of York’s Theatre, to October 21; purchase tickets right here