Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Heating up the summer nights with classic dramas: An incredibly intimate UNCLE VANYA & a heightened ORPHEUS DESCENDING

• By drediman
• July 24, 2023
• No Comments

Over the past few weeks, a pair of Off-Broadway revivals of classic dramas have been heating up New York’s summer nights. As per usual, here are my thoughts on them.

UNCLE VANYA
OHenry Productions
Closed

One of the hottest tickets this summer was the incredibly intimate, luxuriously cast revival of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) courtesy OHenry Productions. Staged in a loft in the Flatiron District for an audience of no more than 40, the production – which finished its limited run last week – featured a deftly contemporary English translation by Paul Schmidt and richly intuitive direction by Jack Serio. Having seen the classic play more times than I can count, I can safely say that Serio’s refreshingly unaffected production comes closest to contemporizing the play without full-on adapting and updating it. Especially as enacted with aching transparency and intelligence by a deluxe cast (e.g., David Cromer as Vanya, Will Brill as Astrov, Marin Ireland as Sonya, Bill Irwin as Serebryakov), the familiar plot seethed with a natural vitality of life as lived, especially potent when experienced in such close quarters literally as if one were a fly on the wall. If you missed the sold out run, fear you not – it’s been hinted that the production will be returning for an encore engagement.

ORPHEUS DESCENDING
Theatre for a New Audience
Through August 6

Then over at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, you can currently find Theatre for a New Audience’s production of Tennessee Williams’ rarely performed play Orpheus Descending (RECOMMENDED). Loosely based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the play tells the story of a mysterious guitar-toting wanderer who shakes up the lives of the inhabitants of a Mississippi town, particularly the life of an Italian immigrant shop owner. The production is helmed by director Erica Schmidt, who gives the work a haunted, emotionally heightened staging (kudos particularly to the stark, shrouded lighting design by David Weiner) that peels away the melodrama to expose the terrifying bigotry at the heart of the play. As led by television star Maggie Siff and the handsome, unusually vulnerable Pico Alexander, the large cast deliver boldly caustic performances – despite some iffy accents – that draw out the pungent poetry of Williams’ writing. Although some purists may prefer a more naturalistic staging, I found Schmidt’s exposing approach to release the play from its backwater setting, thereby imbuing the piece with a sort of universality that returns it to its mythical origins.