Review: Uncle Vanya, English Touring Theatre, York Theatre Royal

8:40am Thursday 6th March 2008

ENGLISH Touring Theatre's return to the Theatre Royal after a two-year hiatus is cause for celebration in itself, but all the more so for Chekhov's tragi-comedy being directed by Sir Peter Hall (whose revival began life as the inaugural show at Kingston's new Rose Theatre in January).

Rarely can watching such boredom and despair on a sun-lit yet greying stage have been so rewarding or cruelly humorous, thanks not only to Hall's wonderful cast and his elegiac direction, but also to Stephen Mulrine's new adaptation, with its colloquial clout.

When Nicholas Le Prevost's eternally disappointed, disbelieving Vanya declares Ronald Pickup's selfish old art professor, Serebryakov, to be "a dry old stick, a sort of scholarly kipper", you can almost smell the insult.

Vanya has tended the family estate for 25 years, a wasted and unremarkable life in late-19th century Russia that has left this good, but pained man looking much older and greyer than his 47 years, and sure to be greyer still after the aforementioned kipper, the ailing, cranky academic Serebryakov, announces his intention to sell up.

Often in this play, the intransigence of the family in a changing world is denoted by the making of yet more tea, but here Le Prevost's Vanya is doing the boiling up inside, full of absurdity and a searing loathing, and unable to contain his forlorn feelings for the professor's bored, indolent and sexually pent-up young wife, Yelena (Michelle Dockery). In the moment where he twice fires a gun and misses - the only occasion in Hall's production where a target is not hit - you sense that rage, not his enervated spirit, has caused him to fire wide.

Anger, frustration, blunted ambition and sexual feelings dominate this arid provincial life.

While the professor throws himself into writing yet another pamphlet that no-one will read, Neil Pearson's once handsome, cynical but still idealist country doctor, the visionary Astrov, becomes distracted from his ecological battles by his thirst for drink and Yelena alike.

Meanwhile, the unrequited love plain, plucky, scuttling Sonya feels for Astrov elicits a most touching performance from Loo Brealey, whose final speech has a quiet dignity in its wish for eternal peace .

Flowing as pleasingly as a glistening stream, Hall's fresh and vital Uncle Vanya is as humorous and sad as you could wish.

Box office: 01904 623568.

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