September 21 – Day 15: The Second Half of Our Uncle Vanya Doubleheader

We had a new rehearsal space today. We’re not done in the bar, by any means (we’ll be back there most of next week), but we were moving downtown to TriBeCa to the Flea Theatre. Leah, our erstwhile Executive Director and current producer, is now working at the Flea (sweet gig!).

Just as I’d gotten the commute uptown figured out, it was time to learn a new route the other way. Interestingly, even though the Flea is more than two miles closer to my apartment, the commute by subway is only two minutes shorter. That new commute is interesting to me in that, uptown, everything is in the grid; all those perpendicular lines. Downtown, though, things get wacky. Before the grid system was devised in Manhattan, streets went every whichway; stopping and starting arbitrarily, running at odd angles, and being kind of chaotic. It’s not unpleasant, by any means; it just means that pedestrians need to keep on their toes. The other thing is that, uptown (and especially in midtown) the sidewalks are crowded with tourists and other people walking slowly or stopping for no apparent reason, as often as not, waving cigarettes around.

I don’t know what it is about this town, but, my god, there are a lot of smokers. Maybe it’s just the stress of living here, but there’s smoke everywhere (except bars and restaurants, thank goodness). I tend to keep the windows open when I’m in the apartment, even now that it’s finally cooled down, and every so often—especially on Fridays and Saturdays—I’ll suddenly get hit with a whiff of really acrid and extremely unpleasant smoke. I remember the old days of going into some place for a meal or a drink and coming out just reeking of smoke. I’m glad those days are over. I’m still dealing with the even-more unpleasant clouds of marijuana smoke (sorry, weed aficionados, but that stuff reeks), but they’re fewer and more far between; just more pungent when I encounter them. (To be fair, though, that problem is even worse in San Francisco.)

Anyway, the streets downtown are just as crowded, but the people have a little more purpose. They tend to know where they’re going; there are just a lot of them.

I made it to the Flea, which is in one of those areas that combine mid-19^th century architecture (with character) and newer construction done in bland modern styles—all those straight lines. The Flea’s building is actually quite nice, but hasn’t had any time to develop any character. It could just as easily be a dental office or an office-supplies company.

  

All those straight lines!

We were directed to go to one of their rehearsal halls, which was also quite nice. The dimensions weren’t quite right (a little better than at the bar), but were close enough to give a sense of what the actual spacing will be. (I seem to have an advantage over the rest of the cast in having done the show before and knowing what it looked like then. It won’t be the same here, but it sounds like there’ll be enough similarities.) The room was basically square and white with a nice wooden floor and a glass wall that overlooked a patio. We squeezed into one end and went through the process of blocking. Brian informed us that, because the movement coordinator was going to be here over the weekend, and he wanted to get as much of the staging out of the way before she arrived, he was going to push through and not rehash or re-run things. As it turned out, he ended up rehashing and re-running things because that seemed to be the most efficient way of getting things organized. We got through a good portion of the first act before we took our 20-minute break, after which we were supposed to resume in the Flea’s downstairs theatre.

When we did go downstairs, there were two big obstacles. The first was temperature. Last week, when it was so damn hot, I would have welcomed extreme air-conditioning, but on Thursday, it was quite temperate and pleasant, so extremely cold air was uncalled-for (especially since I hadn’t brought a jacket). The second was that the theatre has a smallish playing space to begin with—not the least part of which is a massive brick load-bearing column right in the middle of the stage. Add to that a set that featured a movable unit that resembled the front stoop of a brownstone and a nailed-in flat that looked like the front of a bodega, and there wasn’t much room for Mr. Vonnegut. Fortunately, a couple of tech guys came down and moved the stoop unit, but there was nothing they could do with the bodega, so we worked around it the best we could. Between our limited time (we were breaking at 5:00 again) and the process, we didn’t quite finish Act One, but that was okay.

 Not us, but doesn't it seem cramped?

We broke and I had to work my way uptown for Friday’s show, another version of Uncle Vanya. I walked to the subway, which is near City Hall, and was surprised at how many people were out, walking around or sitting in the park. It makes sense in that, for most people, it was the end of the work week and a very pleasant afternoon, unlike so much of the rest of the week. It’s really starting to feel like fall around here. I only hope it stays that way. (It’s supposed to be hot and rainy on Wednesday, but cool otherwise [as far as my weather app can predict].)

This Vanya was done at the Old Globe in San Diego, then transferred to Hunter College, which I, for some reason, had mentally placed on 85^th, a block or so from our bar. It’s actually on 66^th, though, so I had to recalculate my route. Since I’d originally planned on eating at the Shake Shack around 86^th, this called for new plans. As usual, I decided to wait to eat, and headed directly for the theatre.

When I arrived at 66^th, my unerring sense of direction struck again, and I ended up walking south on Lexington, rather than west on 66^th. I course-corrected, got back to where I was supposed to be, then proceeded along the route Google Maps had chosen for me. As I was on my way, though, I happened to look to my right and saw the theatre, nowhere near where I was “supposed to be” going.

There was a handy sign indicating where the show was, although there was nothing telling me where to pick up my tickets. I went into the Loewe Playhouse and nothing but a wolfpack of old people crowding the entrance, like vultures circling a wounded hyena. I excused myself through the crowd to where the box office would logically be and found nothing. I tunneled to the other side, to a booth of sorts where the hearing devices were available. After a moment, I got the attention of the woman in the booth and asked her where I could pick up my ticket. She told me that would be in the other building (the one I’d first spotted), so I fought my way back outside, finally got my ticket, then battled my way back through the throng. Fortunately for me, I’d noticed that the area by the hearing-device booth wasn’t as crowded as the rest of the lobby, so I waited there until the house opened.

 Nice poster, but the final score? Chekhov 1, Nelson 0.

Going inside, I was faced with yet another in-the-round production, though this time it was more of a square, and with higher audience risers. Since it’s a higher-profile production than Bedlam’s, the greater audience capacity made sense. The stage was a mass of furniture that was stacked on tables, although it was all put into place by the actors once the show started.

As it turned out, I think the high profile of the production, rather than its quality, is the reason for the crowds. It turned out to be one of the dullest, least-interesting productions of Chekhov I’ve ever endured. (And I sat through the Three Sisters with which L.A. Actor’s Theatre opened its downtown space that actually got at least twenty minutes longer during its run. Shows usually shorten during a run as things become tighter.)

The gimmick to this production is that Richard Nelson worked with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (who are pretty much the gold standard when it comes to translating from Russian to English) on creating a new version of Vanya. The two capital mistakes on display are Nelson directing and the surprisingly tin-eared quality of the translation.

In my own translations, I strive for a mixture of contemporary and period speech; to keep the audience aware that they are watching a play from the late 19^th or early 20^th century while also phrasing it in ways that are accessible and familiar to a contemporary American audience. The plays are no good if they’re too stiff or too relaxed. (In most cases; the Bedlam adaptation suits its purposes extremely well, but wouldn’t work under any other circumstance, I think.) Nelson, Pevear, and Volokhonsky were interviewed about their process for the Times, which made me hopeful, even as much I disagreed with some of their choices. They particularly focus on the word “чудаки,” which I thought was best expressed as “oddball,” but which they insist is best represented by “misfit.” This is all where shades of meaning come into play, but in the context of the script, I think I’m closer than they are (and feel especially so after seeing the production.) There are many, many other examples I could give, but this would become a post solely about that.

Suffice it to say, Nelson—as adaptor and director—has fallen prey to two of the most common misconceptions about Chekhov’s plays; that they’re humorless and deadly serious. A good example of the former case is his excision of the character of Telyegin, aka “Waffles.” Waffles is a key ingredient in the play, being both the only outsider to the family dynamic and the comic relief. These comic characters are all over the four major plays, and to ignore them is to cut out a major piece of Chekhov’s dramaturgy.

There’s a famous quote from Chekhov about “nothing” happening in his plays. His response is that it’s not the major events in our lives that necessarily affect us; it’s the accumulation of small things: “People are sitting at a table having dinner, that's all, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being torn apart.” Nelson has taken this approach to an extreme, stripping out all the “acting” and emotion from his cast, and having them sit and discuss things quite calmly, despite the extremity of the underlying emotions and subtext. While I appreciate the idea in the abstract, there’s no there there in the actual event.

You can take the humor out of Chekhov and have an emotionally-affecting production, or you can take the emotion out and concentrate on the humor, but when you take both out, you don’t have Chekhov; you have Nelson’s version of him, and that’s deadly dull and flat.

It didn’t help that the performers were poorly directed in even what they did do. They were good actors—with one notable exception—and, with a director who understood Chekhov’s intention—to show people how stupidly they’re living in order to motivate them to take change society—it might have been a fine production. (That “exceptional” actor was Jesse Pennington as Astrov, who substituted a large beard, an Irish [?] accent, slurred speech, and bizarre gestures for an actual character. One of the worst performances I’ve ever endured—and I sat through a King Lear from the Stratford Festival that featured a Gloucester who reacted to his eyes being put out as though he were a toddler who’d been told he wasn’t getting a second cookie.)

Of course, the audience, prompted by Ben Brantley’s rave (once again showing the worth of his critical acumen), gave it a near-unanimous standing ovation, in which I did not join, so what do I know?

After that spectacle, I hung out in the courtyard for a little while, talking to a friend of Pidge’s who happened to be there and recognized me from Facebook, then had to get something to eat to get the taste of the production out of my mouth. I took the subway to 23^rd and headed for the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. It was a nice night, and a good one for eating outside, so I ordered, found a table (which was, surprisingly to me, not easy, even after 10:30 [but it was a Friday night]), and ate contentedly.

I walked home, and as I walked, listened to an episode of the Bowery Boys podcast, which focuses on various aspects of New York history. I mainly wanted to listen to the episode about Tompkins Square Park, which gave me a new insight into what I see there every day; the landmarks, the attractions; even the trees.

It was a fairly early night after that, especially since we were moving to a third rehearsal space on Saturday.