Moscow Mossovet State
Academic Theatre

Three Sisters/Uncle Vanya

Wyndham Theatre, London WC2

3/5

Mossovet State Academic Theatre’s double bill of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, in Russian with surtitles, offers a day-long total immersion in the sound and texture of Chekhov.  

The ensemble, led by the famous Russisan film and theatre director Andrei Konchalovsky, is outstanding in many ways as the actors are choreographed through a series of tea-drinkings, arrivals, departures, meals, dances, family gatherings, casual conversations — the stuff of which Chekhov’s plays are made.  

It is true that English productions of Chekhov have in the past missed his comic touch and were unduly melancholic, but it is also the case that Konchalovsky has not quite managed to fully achieve a unity between surface farce and the tragic subtext that shadows the minutiae of seemingly inconsequential events and gestures. 

This weakness is most notable in Uncle Vanya as Pavel Derevyanko’s Vanya is too much the buffoon, whereas at the heart of the play is the tragedy of his wasted life, supporting the failed Professor and his wife Elena (Nataliya Vdovina), a woman  so drugged with idleness that she cannot walk straight.  

Alexander Bobrovsky, as Waffles, a massive, shambling wreck of a man, achieved that wonderful Chekovian blend of comedy undercut with a tragic subtext, a blend embodied in his very movements.  

Corrupted lives, idleness and pointless work are also the themes in Three Sisters, and once again the outstanding performance is Yulia Vysotskaya, who played Sofya in Vanya and here plays Masha, in an often-searing performance of frustration, desire and failure. 

However, the object of her desire is not believable as Vershinin, played by Alexander Domogarov, is miscast as an oleaginous, unattractive prospect.  

While the cast were consistently excellent, the same cannot be said of the director who combined imaginative touches with superfluous insertions such as the video clips shown during scene changes.  

In all, a very uneven, fragmented six hours of Chekhov, wonderful and deeply moving in parts and in others jarring with inappropriate farce, an unevenness that appears to parallel Konchalovsky’s career that has veered from the sublime of the collaboration with Tarkovsky to the ridiculous of the ’80s cop caper Tango and Cash.  

Ends today. Box office (0844) 482-5120