Thursday, April 17, 2025
This weekend is your last chance to catch ‘Downton Abbey’ star Hugh Bonneville in ‘Uncle Vanya’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC). Considering the play’s perfect blend of comedy and poignant emotion, this is one show you won’t want to miss.
Written by world-renowned Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, ‘Uncle Vanya’ follows its eponymous lead and his niece Sonya as their family’s secluded estate is enlivened by a variety of visitors—namely the aging, ailment-riddled Professor Serebryakov, his doctor Astrov, and his young wife Yelena. Alluring and aggravating in equal measure, these guests who come and go as they please force Vanya and Sonya to grapple with the debilitating stagnation to which they’ve willingly resigned themselves. Though Chekhov penned ‘Uncle Vanya’ in the late 1890s, the brilliance and relevance of his simmering script endures in the modern era.
Directed by Simon Goodwin, STC’s ‘Uncle Vanya’ is anchored by its remarkable performances, performances just as likely to bring a laugh to your lips as a tear to your eyes. Beginning with Bonneville, the ‘Paddington’ actor oscillates seamlessly between moments of humor and heartbreak throughout the show, infusing the vodka-dependent Vanya with a considerable amount of depth. Even when he is belligerent or unreasonable, you can’t help but want the best for him, a testament to the strength of Bonneville’s performance. Bonneville’s vaudeville physical comedy is also quite noteworthy; his animated facial expressions and goofy movements make his depressive descent later on in the show all the more unnerving.
Furthermore, Ito Aghayere delivers a breathtaking performance as Yelena, embodying her siren-esque charm and her volcanic exasperation with ease—especially in scenes with love doctor Astrov, played to perfection by John Benjamin Hickey. On the flip side, Melanie Field is equally enchanting as the tender-hearted Sonya—a woman who, like her Uncle Vanya, wrestles with feelings of inadequacy and unrequited love. While Sonya might struggle to assert herself, Field establishes herself as a true leader on stage, especially when delivering the show’s final monologue.
As the play’s events unfold, the audience gets the chance to watch these characters interact under a magnifying glass. This voyeuristic feeling is bolstered by the stage lighting—on a rainy night in the first act, the blue-purple shadow of a bay windowpane reflects on the stage’s back wall, a choice which implies that, in observing this family from our audience seats, we are watching from the perspective of a curious outsider peeking through the glass. One could also perhaps read these window pane shadows as resembling the bars of a jail cell—illuminating how the characters’ physical confinement on the estate parallels their emotional trappedness.
‘Uncle Vanya’ is running at STC through Apr. 20. Tickets can be purchased here.