STAGE REVIEW : Astonishing Version of ‘Uncle Vanya’

HOUSTON —  The old debate about how much a director should impose his vision on someone else’s play doesn’t go away. It only gets larger. Peter Brook left a very personal signature on such classics as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Carmen” and, more recently, “The Cherry Orchard.” Shakespeare, Bizet and Chekhov were undamaged by the subjectivity.

Now a director has come halfway around the world from the small Soviet republic of Lithuania to present an “Uncle Vanya” as personal and astonishing as anything that has come before it. What makes this State Youth Theatre of Lithuania presentation of the Chekhov play at the Alley Theatre extraordinary is the taciturn, almost demonic vision of its director, Eimuntas Nekrosius. Rarely has a production been so clearly the mark of the person behind it--or a work of theater been so disturbing and hypnotic.

Nekrosius’ “Vanya” won’t cater to the accustomed spectacle of a bored and disaffected gentry, on long, languid Russian country afternoons, lamenting opportunities lost and the dailiness of life.

It opens--stunningly--to loud, snatches of the plaintive Jewish prayer for the dead. In the high-ceilinged gloom we make out an eclectic collection of chairs, settees, a table and a lone upright piano.

A man--Astrov--is placing suction cups on a reclining figure masked by chairs. Behind them a huge painting of Russian woods with two, maybe three dwarfed and solitary figures dominates the scene. All is still, stylized, eerie. The first word spoken--softly, insistently, over and over--is “Wait.” Wait. Wait.

From there, events rush and tumble. Characters enter, talk, to one another, to themselves. They slink, sashay, dance in and out of the dark, oversized room--trapped animals pacing in a large, once luxurious, now-crumbling cage.

A complaint that the furniture needs dusting brings in serfs in soft slippers who slide on the floor as if it were a skating rink, largely oblivious of their masters. They survey the problem and do nothing. The music is now Klezmer merriment. In these slothful, comical rustics is a hint of real danger and the revolution to come. . . .

This is a theater of images and layered meaning. Things are rarely what they seem. When plain little Sonya (Dalia Overaite) tells her gorgeous stepmother Yelena (Dalia Storyk), “You’re so beautiful,” it is a statement steeped in rage. Her hands fly up ready to scratch. And when the two unhappily reach an understanding, they embrace, waltz silently up and off the stage, locked in each other’s gaze, while the Hebraic liturgy exclaims, “The holy ones, the holy ones, who shine in the firmament. . . . “

This is not the only masterstroke of superimposed business. The production is full of them. And yes, there is plenty of tampering with the script, including a mock suicide (Astrov’s) and some breathtaking byplay with a collection of perfume bottles (a consummate apotheosis to the play).

Sacrilege? Ordinarily, yes. What makes such handiwork acceptable here, against all odds, is its dark illumination of the playwright’s intent. Nekrosius may cast his own spell, but at no one’s expense. There is something majestic and profoundly serious about this production, Grand Guignolesque in its bathos, comic in its tragedy, cynical in its comedy, subliminal in its unabashed collection of overt, symbolic moments.

The production doesn’t just shun realism, it rigorously avoids it. When Astrov and Yelena face off, they do it at opposite ends of the stage, one foot up on a chair, like jousters ready to mount. Astrov (Kostas Smoriginas) and Vanya (Vidas Petkevicius) are not alone in their torments and lovesick travails. Yelena is the hub, but she is also stalked by Sonya’s anguish, by the foolish, tongue-tied presence of the furtive Telyegin (Jozuas Pocius) and by her self-centered husband Serebryakov (Vladas Bagdonas), austere and alienated and old enough here to border on Machiavellian senility. These are all people in sad and magnificent ruin.

That’s the intricacy Nekrosius is able to weave into this “Vanya,” a play he had (deliberately?) never seen performed before he directed it. (He is now working on a “King Lear,” which he has also never seen on stage.)

A company of superbly coordinated actors buoys the concept. Such enviable fine tuning is never an accident. The actors rehearsed “Vanya” for six months and have been playing it for two years as part of a much wider repertoire.

This writer was lucky enough to see Nekrosius’ production of “A Day as Long as a Century” at the company’s home base in Vilnius three years ago. It was a mythic and politicized adaptation of an epic novel by Chingiz Aitmatov boldly presented in pre-glasnost days.

Next week, Houston gets to see “Pirosmani, Pirosmani,” a home-grown work that has earned the director high praise at home and in Europe where he is just beginning to be recognized. “Vanya” and “Pirosmani” then move on to Chicago. Neither is headed for Los Angeles--yet. But if there is any justice, this theater and this director should top the list of companies invited to take part in the 1990 Los Angeles Festival--if we can wait that long.

‘UNCLE VANYA’

A production of Anton Chekhov’s play presented by the Alley Theatre of Houston in association with the Ministry of Culture of the Lithuanian SSR and the State Youth Theatre of the Lithuanian SSR. Lithuanian translation M. Miskinis. English translation Michael Henry Heim. Director Eimuntas Nekrosius. Production design Nadezda Gultiayeva. Music Faustas Latena. Sound design Petras Asimavicius. Production stage manager J. Vaitiekaitis. Cast Vladas Bagdonas, Dalia Storyk, Dalia Overaite, Elvyra Zebertaviciute, Vidas Petkevicius, Kostas Smoriginas, Juozas Pocius, Irena Tamosiunaite, Rimgaudas Karvelis, Jurate Aniulyte, Vytautas Taukinaitis. Performances run through Wednesday.