From 25th to the 28th October 2023 the Crouch End Players will put on Vanya, an adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, at the Moravian Church Hall in Hornsey, N8 7HR. Tickets are available via EventBrite.

The people in Tchehov (sic) plays produced on English principles convey the impression of a party of unbalanced folk oft-times bordering on lunacy.

J. T. Grein, ‘The World of Theatre’, Illustrated London News, 20th Feb 1926

Grein’s comment is I think intended as a criticism but I would prefer to think that there isn’t any other way of presenting the characters created by Chekhov. Unbalanced folk bordering on lunacy make for great theatre!

When I mentioned that I intended to put Vanya on stage people have often commented to me that they thought his plays mundane or miserable. Which might have put off a less determined individual. But I knew what I wanted from the beginning and that was to dramatise the trivial squabbles and petty betrayals of ordinary life. In particular, as will become apparent, at a time when everyday experience was reduced in scope by an international crisis.

I have seen four Vanyas, the first being Vanya on 42nd Street. I freely admit that I’m an absolute Malle nut, which isn’t really a fashionable thing. I think he’s too eclectic for those who like their auteurs to have a consistent theme and style. But Von42ndS is a demonstration of what makes Malle a great film-maker – the ability to get incredible performances out of his actors and also the ability to get out the way of your appreciation of them. His Vanya is the exemplary demonstration of this as you barely notice the transition from Malle filming the actors assembling in a shabby New York theatre to the play itself beginning. I haven’t watched it for a while (not since before The Thing) and I won’t watch it till after our run. But I guarantee it won’t be much longer after!

My main memory of it is of Wallace Shawn’s torment as Vanya. I’d only ever seen him in My Dinner With André, in which he appears to play second fiddle but actually steals the picture from the more attention-grabbing Gregory. Well, actually the waiter steals the picture from both of them but don’t tell them I said that. He brought angst to Vanya but I don’t think he brought the humour that I think is lurking inside him somewhere.

The first stage production I saw was at the Hope & Anchor in Islington in a tiny room at the top of the building. The set was an amazing study in brevity. A table, a samovar, a map of Africa and not much else. Done in the round so that it felt like you were in Vanya’s house, unacknowledged yet present observers of the turmoil the family go through. The actors were semi-professional and for the most part incredibly committed. (Isn’t it often the way?) But it was the staging that I really remembered, and the fact that it had a run time of 90 minutes with no interval, characters having been cut as well as speeches.

We went to the show during the rehearsal period for A Soldier’s Song and it was that evening that I had the first thought that we could put on a similar production. ASS was performed with the audience on three sides on a catwalk-ish stage and every time I turned over my own Vanya in my head this was what it looked like. But it didn’t sound like Tales Retold’s version because I already knew that I was going to bugger around with Chekhov in some way that would make it less Russian and more me.

Then just before the pandemic we saw Ian Rickson’s staging at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Well, Toby Jones, dream casting or what? Denize wasn’t convinced but I thought this was the best performance I’d ever seen on stage in a play that by now I felt I knew very well. I also liked the fact that it was on at the Pinter because the Tom Cribb is an ace pub! The staging I just found weird, with the theatre walls left bare at the back so that you could see the fire extinguisher, mixed up with a naturalistic if gigantic set. But yes, the humour was there.

And then the pandemic hit. With one of the silver linings being that the BBC filmed Rickson’s production. Which then was my fourth Vanya and the point at which I found my own mise en scène. A misfit family stuck in a house together? With only a doctor visiting from time to time, bemoaning the disease he toils unceasingly to relive the suffering from? Remind you of anything?

But I parked it because in 2020 it didn’t seem like we’d be doing any theatre for a while, and soon it became apparent that if we did it would be in restricted circumstances. So we did No Exit instead. Which was a success but one that left me in need of a break. While there was a lot of black humour in the Sartre (or at least I thought so, audience reaction varied) it is a very difficult play and to anyone who tells me that they find Chekhov a bit bleak I just tell them to try Sartre and see how they like that.

As the pandemic became a memory rather than an experience I started to work on Vanya in earnest, completing a first draft in January of this year while also working on the Montherlant for the Festival as a bit of light relief.

The translation of a major work of global literature is something one does lightly or not at all. Because if you thought of all the other translators or adaptors that had preceded you and how esteemed they are (just think of any famous theatre actor/director/writer of the last fifty years and they’re bound to have done it) then, Vanya like, you’d sooner put a bullet in your head than go toe to toe with them. So I made Vanya mine (and Chekhov’s of course) and not Malle’s or Rickson’s. And now that we’re rehearsing it’s ours.

And when you buy a ticket it’ll be yours.

Literature Theatre Chekhov Crouch End Crouch End Players Theatre