With Steve Carell in the Title Role, Chekhov’s Comedic Elements Stand Out in This ‘Uncle Vanya’

Unfortunately, while Carell and many others in the cast offer credible performances, the revival now at Lincoln Center Theater, featuring a new adaptation by Heidi Schreck, fails to live up to other interpretations of the play.

Marc J. Franklin
Steve Carell as Vanya. Marc J. Franklin

Before this past weekend, the last production I had caught of “Uncle Vanya” — and one of the best I’ve ever seen — was staged in the living room of a Manhattan loft, with the actor and director David Cromer cast in the title role. The company, which toured similarly intimate local spaces last summer and also included Bill Irwin and Marin Ireland, both superb, used a popular translation by Paul Schmidt; regardless, it felt utterly, at times devastatingly, fresh.

The revival of “Uncle Vanya” that has just arrived at Lincoln Center Theater features a new adaptation by Heidi Schreck, who became the darling of New York theater several years back, when her polemic “What the Constitution Means to Me” — which drew on her experiences as a teenage debater and in which she also starred — scooped up a bevy of honors, from an Obie Award to a Tony nomination once it transferred to Broadway. 

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