Sonya and her uncle Vanya have devoted their lives to managing the family farm in isolation, but when her celebrated, ailing father and his charismatic wife move in, their lives are upended. In the heat of the summer, the wrong people fall in love, desires and resentments erupt, and the family is forced to reckon with the ghosts of their unlived lives.
Director Lila Neugebauer (The Waverly Gallery, The Wolves) and playwright Heidi Schreck (What the Constitution Means to Me) collaborate on the premiere of this Lincoln Center Theater production of UNCLE VANYA, which pairs Anton Chekhov's enduring masterpiece with one of America's most celebrated contemporary playwrights in a strikingly immediate new translation.
The Lincoln Center “Uncle Vanya,” which is the 11th production of the play on Broadway, doesn’t completely solve the central difficulties of staging it. The production still requires patience; there’s no concession to the Tik-Tok generation. And while Schreck’s translation does bring out the humor, and gets rid of the stuffiness, it introduces potential problems of its own. Still, under Lila Neugebauer’s direction, the performances of the nine-member cast do click often enough to reward those of us who are patient.
The famous misreading of Chekhov is that nothing happens in his plays. People talk, people stew, people fight; life goes on. Uncle Vanya is, on one level, a groundbreaking play of intense, stifled feelings, until the dam breaks. Schreck and Neugebauer, with a Hollywood-heavy cast, have accomplished a feat in staging a classic that feels both accessible and dense, but perhaps more so in capturing a mood of tragicomic discontent.
Digital Lottery:
Price: $48
Where: http://LCTlottery.com.
When: Beginning at 12:01am EST the day before the performance.
Limit: Two per customer
Information: Winners will be chosen at random at 10:00am and at 3:00pm the day before the performance.
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