Vanya on 42nd Street

Anton Chekov's Uncle Vanya gets what I consider its perfect venue for 1994's VANYA ON 42ND STREET - a rotting, abandoned theater in the heart of Times Square, in its final days of filth and sleaze.  We glimpse how 42nd Street used to look in the opening moments of director Louis Malle's film, his last.  The actors we will see performing the play wander the street with amusement or that zombified visage many city dwellers sport.  One of them is Andre Gregory, who directed much theater in NYC in the '60s and '70s.  In the early '90s, he gathered his cast for rehearsals in palaces now left to decay.  Places with unusable stages because rodents had chewed the rigging.

Gregory would invite a handful of friends (some of whom seen here) to witness the performances.  There were never any sets or costumes.  Just Chekov's words and the actors in their own clothes.  Malle, who had worked with Andre and Wallace Shawn (who plays Vanya) on MY DINNER WITH ANDRE a decade or so before, filmed one of these workshops at the New Amsterdam with only a few breaks in between each act.  The theater was once home to the Ziegfeld Follies. At the time of filming, just another vacancy of memories on the famous street.

A vacancy of memories is an accurate way to describe every character in Uncle Vanya, which was adapted by David Mamet.  Longings, regrets, crushed passions, inertia, ennui.  Souls stymied in a rural estate, near powerless to act on desires, to even live life.  Shawn has frequently been described as miscast but his twentieth century nebbishness seems a comfortable and appropriate fit for Vanya.  Julianne Moore, whose star was beginning to rise and is featured prominently on the film's posters, is also just right as Yelena, who is married to a much older man, a professor named Seryryakov (previously Vanya's brother in law), played by George Gaynes, also marvelous. Vanya's niece Sonya (Brooke Smith, best known for SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) harbors an unrequited love for the hard drinking but congenial Dr. Astrov (Larry Pine), friend of Vanya.  There are other relational dynamics among these characters.

Let me additionally mention that Smith and Pine, and hell, all of the cast, are sensational.

VANYA ON 42ND STREET is a unique experience.  Malle somehow, seemingly effortlessly, makes all of this theatrical and cinematic.  The camera rarely strays from the actors in this cavernous, dim, and gloomy space.  The crumbling walls and deep darkness are as apt for this material as anything could possibly be. Early on, we see Gregory and the small audience watching.  I loved how the banter between the actors as they remove their coats and play with props seamlessly coalesces into the play.  It may take you a moment to wonder just how and at what point that occurred.

The performance is captured simply and without stylistic intrusions.  Chekhov's sad tale needs no embellishment or accoutrement, yet Malle achieves more than mere artless point and shoot.  He has somehow made the experience of live theater, one where you breathe the same air as the actors, come alive on film, and actually feel like one.