Animal Fire Theatre has set its Uncle Vanya opening Tuesday, Sept. 3, in and around the Lord Mansion. It’s a setting that’s as enchanting as Anton Chekhov’s play is bleak.
The audience, limited to 30 people each evening, moves to a new location — garden, dining room, living room and Vanya’s bedroom — for each act. The effect is powerful: Theatergoers are part of the action, and moments of surprise and drama elicit jumps and gasps.
It’s an unusually immersive and absorbing evening of theater, and very few tickets remain. (If you’re interested, look now (https://unclevanya.planningpod.com/), and then come back to read the rest of the story.)
This Vanya, a 2018 translation by Stepan S. Simek of Portland, adds humor to Chekhov’s tale of wasted purpose, unrequited love and desperation. The script includes anachronistic references that are echoed in details of the props and costumes and in moments of music (by guitarist Oscar Kryzanauskas, who plays Waffles, a farmer who lives on the estate). But the setting is still Russia before the Russian Revolution.
Director Marla Beth Elliott, an Evergreen State College theater professor emeritus, had long wanted to direct Vanya. “It’s about how do we know who we are?” she said. “How do we live a meaningful life? How, in our case, do we come out of the pandemic?
“Chekhov is really subtle and funny and empathic,” she said. “He was a doctor. He has a doctor’s eye for just taking people where they are and noticing how they think they should be and noticing how they actually are.”
She’d long wanted to direct Vanya and hatched the idea to set it in the 1920 mansion, owned by the college, after attending an event there several years ago. She’s thrilled that the college was able to accommodate the production, which is playing on weeknights to work around weddings and other events.
Animal Fire’s Scott Douglas, last seen as Falstaff in the company’s Henry IV, plays the long-suffering Vanya, who simmers with mostly buried rage. Elliott was impressed by Douglas’ work in the one-person An Iliad just before the pandemic, and when she approached him about playing Vanya, Douglas offered that Animal Fire could produce the show, which also features company regulars — and board members — Brian Hatcher as Astrov, a country doctor, and Drew Doyle as Alexander, Vanya’s tyrannical brother-in-law.
Elliott herself plays Marina, a nurse who’s been with Vanya’s family for decades. Also in the cast are Kate Fortin, Emily Greenhaigh, Ariel Birks and Nick Conti. Among the cast, only Doyle is not an Evergreen grad, and many of the actors were Elliott’s students.
The cast has been rehearsing for more than a year, meeting a few times each month. The process was inspired by the Moscow Art Theatre’s practice of long-form rehearsal. “It’s been meaningful to us,” Elliott said. “It has allowed the show to develop very deliberately and slowly.”
Note: Uncle Vanya is sold out but there is a “standby” policy for unclaimed tickets on the night of the show. Come at 6:15 p.m. to get in line for standby tickets, on a Pay What You Choose basis.
Photos by Martin Fortin Jr.
WHAT
Uncle Vanya
WHEN
6:30 p.m. Sept. 3-5 and 10-13
WHERE
The Lord Mansion, 211 21st Ave. S.W., Olympia
TICKETS
$30; for the Sept. 10 show, pay what you will. Advance tickets (https://unclevanya.planningpod.com/) are a must.