LONDON — Don’t be fooled by the billing. Toby Jones and Richard Armitage may have pride of place on the poster for Ian Rickson’s West End revival of “Uncle Vanya.” But it’s no surprise to see all the actors bowing as one at the end, with no one stepping forward for applause.
Those wanting to see solo bows can look elsewhere, to any of the many celebrity-heavy productions that often find their way from London to Broadway. But Chekhov, possibly more than any dramatist, benefits from ensemble playing that gives every participant his or her due.
Rickson’s “Vanya,” at the Harold Pinter Theater through May 2, grants equal time to the variously wounded and disappointed inhabitants of a fractious Russian household. In a feisty new adaptation by Conor McPherson, this is an unusually spiky, unsentimental reading of a frequently performed play — but one that could benefit from deepening the emotional stakes. The production is never quite as moving as you want it to be, though it is always ravishing to look at.
Some characters come into bolder relief than usual. Ciaran Hinds is in fine, fighting form as Vanya’s gruffly spoken brother-in-law, an aging professor whose younger second wife awakens a longing in both Jones’s angsty Vanya and Armitage’s self-lacerating Astrov, a doctor who has stared death in the face once too often.
The unwitting temptress, Yelena, is played by Rosalind Eleazar, a commendably robust, earthy presence; it’s a shame that Aimee Lou Wood, as Vanya’s self-deflating niece, Sonya, seems so awkward opposite her at the crucial end of the first half. Wood, known for her TV work on the British series “Sex Education,” gives a whiny, gestural performance at odds with a company that otherwise finds renewed power in Chekhov’s acridly funny howl of pain.
A larger cast — 17 (children included, and only two men) — also share the deserved applause across town at the National Theater premiere of Lucy Kirkwood’s “The Welkin,” a stirring if overstuffed play set in 18th-century rural England. (Running through May 23, it will be broadcast via NT Live on May 21.)
The company includes such notable theater and TV names as Maxine Peake and Haydn Gwynne, but pretty much everyone in James Macdonald’s three-hour production gets a defining moment in what is an intriguing amalgam of “The Crucible” and “Twelve Angry Men” — the main difference being that it features women deciding the fate of the accused. Sally Poppy (Ria Zmitrowicz) is on trial for murder but will avoid hanging if, in accordance with the law at the time, she is pregnant.
The characters’ hardscrabble lives are made plain by the opening tableau, in which the women of the jury are shown doing housework in the partitioned boxes of Bunny Christie’s set. (The scene has a painterly beauty worthy of permanent display.) Macdonald brings the same rigor he has applied to comparably challenging plays by, say, Caryl Churchill, whose works he has directed at many London playhouses. Kirkwood may not have Churchill’s gift for compression, but when it comes to theatrical daring, she’s not far behind.
Unlike most actors, who have to create a sense of ensemble from scratch for each production, the members of Mischief Theater have been working together for over a decade. Since meeting at drama school in London, they have been building their reputation — including a stint on Broadway — and their latest, “Magic Goes Wrong,” is now at the Vaudeville Theater. In fact, they have three studies in chaos running on the West End and a prime-time TV comedy series on the BBC.
Their latest venture has been devised with the American magicians and comedians Penn & Teller, who don’t appear onstage but are credited as co-writers of this magic show gone manically awry. (Ben Hart is the magic consultant.) As per the established “Something Goes Wrong” formula, a self-described Mind Mangler (the priceless Henry Lewis) is at perpetual odds with his teleprompter, the birds in a dove act turn out to be dead, and a devil-may-care magician known as The Blade (Dave Hearn, hilariously intense) sustains more than a few serious-seeming injuries along the way.
Directed by Adam Meggido, “Magic Goes Wrong” is the second offering of a three-show residency at this playhouse by Mischief Theater, and in a sign of the company’s commercial appeal, the run has been extended through the summer, until Aug. 30. Though none of the exceedingly likable performers has yet found individual renown, they are celebrated in the collective they founded: At a recent performance, the audience greeted several of them with familiar whoops, like a rock band.
The result may not push Mischief in the new direction promised by last fall’s far more ambitious “Groan Ups,” a proper play that told of an unrequited, almost Chekhovian longing. But the actors’ reappearance so soon after makes you wonder where this true ensemble’s wide-ranging anarchy will alight next. Proper ensemble companies have all but vanished in the English-speaking theater, but Mischief, whether by magic or otherwise, looks here to stay.
Uncle Vanya. Directed by Ian Rickson. Harold Pinter Theater, through May 2.
The Welkin. Directed by James Macdonald. National Theater, through May 23. NT Live broadcast May 21.
Magic Goes Wrong. Directed by Adam Meggido. Vaudeville Theater, through Aug. 30.
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
