On a Russian Farm, Where Frustration Grows Hal Brooks Directs ‘Uncle Vanya’ at the Pearl Theater
Laura Collins-HughesSeptember 24, 2014: Chekhov didn’t make it to the People’s Climate March that flowed through Midtown Manhattan on Sunday — being dead does get in the way — but he was with the environmental activists in spirit. In Uncle Vanya, which opens the season at the Pearl Theater Company, this playwright’s 19th-century worries over an ailing earth are startlingly contemporary. “The forests are disappearing one by one, the rivers are polluted, wildlife is becoming extinct, the climate is changing for the worse, every day the planet gets poorer and uglier,” Astrov, the doctor, tells his friends. “It’s a disaster!” Finding immediacy is never a problem in Paul Schmidt’s vibrant, loose-limbed translation, which Hal Brooks, the Pearl’s new artistic director, wisely uses in his production. There’s no groping through layers of musty language to find our connection to Chekhov’s little band of privileged malcontents, stricken with ennui as the Russian Empire sleepwalks toward its end.
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