[NEohioPAL] "Uncle Vanya" Mamet adaptation

[Janis Harcar]

Weathervane Playhouse Presents
David Mamet’s Adaptation of “Uncle Vanya”
Veteran Director Bob Belfance Stages the Translated-into-English Russian Classic for the Playhouse’s Intimate Dietz Theater

Weathervane Playhouse’s 79th season continues with a new version of an old classic as the Playhouse presents Uncle Vanya, adapted by the celebrated American playwright David Mamet. 

Working from a literal translation from Russian to English, Anton Chekhov’s 19th century Russian masterpiece retains its powerful themes and setting – but in Mamet’s creative hands the classic drama’s language, characters and situations are enlarged and enlivened for a modern audience.

With production support provided by Margaret J. Dietz, veteran director Bob Belfance’s production of Uncle Vanya is presented in Weathervane’s intimate John L. Dietz Theater between Jan. 9 and 25, 2014.

Speaking about the play, director Belfance explains that “Chekhov believed that a play need not make a point. At its best, it might suggest one. He wanted to provoke a mood rather than communicate an idea. The real theme of Chekhov’s plays is the destruction of beauty, which is always very sad.”

Set on the crumbling estate of a retired professor and his beautiful young wife, Uncle Vanya depicts a tangled web of desire that consumes various friends and family members who have sought refuge there. 

The place is Russia and the year is 1899. A retired professor named Serebryakov has returned to his country estate with his beautiful young wife, Yelena. The estate originally belonged to his first wife, who is now deceased. The married couple has returned to the estate because the professor’s health has begun to decline. Upon their return, the professor reconnects with the extended family members who manage his estate: Mariya, the mother of his first wife; Sonya, his daughter by his first marriage; and Vanya, who is Mariya’s son.

County doctor Astrov, whose arrival to the estate marks the beginning of the play, is brought in to help cure the ailing professor. His presence causes a stir in the household, for he is ardently loved by the innocent Sonya.

When night falls at the estate, we get a true bearing of the acrimonious relationship between Vanya, who has been caretaker of the estate for 25 years, and the sickly Serebryakov. Serebryakov is being incredibly demanding in the wake of his illness, causing everyone in the household to view him with annoyance and despair.

Uncle Vanya Performance and Ticket Information

Uncle Vanya plays for 12 performances in Weathervane Playhouse’s John L. Dietz Theater between Jan. 9 and 25, 2014. (The Dietz Theater is Weathervane Playhouse’s intimate, 48-seat “second stage” within its Weathervane Lane facility.)

The preview performance is Thursday, Jan. 9 at 7:30 p.m.; the official opening-night performance is Friday, Jan. 10 at 8 p.m.

Between Jan. 5 and 25, 2014, performance days and times are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Additionally, there will be one Saturday matinee on Jan. 18 at 2:30 p.m.

Tickets for all performances of the play are $18 each. Tickets for college students are $5 each. The 48-seat Dietz Theater features general-admission seating only.

For tickets, call the Weathervane Box Office at 330-836-2626 or connect online to www.weathervaneplayhouse.com.

The Uncle Vanya Cast

DALE M. FRANKS
Alexandr Vladimirovich Serebyakov

AMANDA LARKIN
Yelena Andreyevna

JEN KLIKA
Sofya Alexandrovna

BARBARA TROTTER
Mariya Vasilyevna Voynitzkaya

ALEX CIKRA
Ivan Petrovich Voynitzky

JIM FIPPIN
Mikhail Lvovich Astrov

TIM KELLY
Ilya Ilyich Telegin

MARCI PAOLUCCI
Marina

The Uncle Vanya Creative Team

BOB BELFANCE
Director

GREG BEALER
Stage Manager

SUE STOUT-DAVIS
Lighting Designer

DAN LEVAN 
Properties Designer

JUSTYN TYLER JAYMES
Costume Designer

ALAN SCOTT FERRALL
Sound Designer, Scenic Designer and Technical Director

KATHY KOHL
Assistant Technical Director

About the Show’s Director

Weathervane Playhouse welcomes back BOB BELFANCE as the guest director of Uncle Vanya, which marks his 194th production at Weathervane. In 1961, Bob signed on as Weathervane’s Managing Artistic Director and made two promises to the Playhouse’s board of trustees. The first was to turn Weathervane into the best community theater in Ohio. By 1966, with attendance averaging 106 percent of capacity, critics and audiences were in agreement: Weathervane was one of the premier theaters in Ohio. His second promise was that a new theater would be built for the enjoyment of Weathervane’s audience. In 1970, that promise was fulfilled when Weathervane’s new theater facility opened on Weathervane Lane. This veteran director’s many achievements and his lifelong dedication to community theater were recognized in 2002 when he was inducted into the Ohio Community Theatre Association Hall of Fame.

About this Adaptation of Uncle Vanya

Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s legendary and influential Uncle Vanya debuted at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1899 and has continued to impact the theater world ever since, influencing such well known American playwrights as Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee. The equally influential American playwright David Mamet was commissioned to create an adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in 1988 after his successful recreation of Chekhov’s play The Cherry Orchard.

Mamet has cited Chekhov as one of the major influences on his theatrical ideas, and he viewed his work in Chekhovian adaptation as “the practical approach to grasping Chekhov’s technique,” according to author Ira Bruce Nadel (in his book, David Mamet: a Life in the Theatre). Because Mamet is not a Russian speaker, he modified the original play from Vlada Chernomordik’s unpublished, literal translation of the text. In general, Mamet was truthful to the original plot, but “enlivened the language and situations” within his adaptation, according to Nadel. 

Mamet’s Uncle Vanya premiered in April 1988 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. His adaptation of Uncle Vanya also made it to the silver screen: It was the basis for his screenplay for the film Vanya on 42nd Street, directed by Louis Malle and released in 1994.

About the Playwright and the Adapter

ANTON PAVLOVICH CHEKHOV (playwright) was a product of humble beginnings. His father, Pavel Igorevich Chekhov, had been born a serf. Chekhov’s grandfather, Igor Mikhailovich Chekhov, managed to buy freedom for himself and his three sons. When Anton Chekhov was born on Jan. 29, 1860, serfs made up about 80 percent of the population. Tsar Alexander II declared the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, about a year after Chekhov’s birth. While Chekhov’s father had worked his way up to becoming a shopkeeper and tavern owner in Taganrog, life was still difficult for the family. German historian Siegfried Melchinger describes Igor Chekhov as extremely religious and “a tyrant” who abused his wife and children. In a letter to one of his brothers, Anton Chekhov recalled how his father would throw “indignant and furious tantrums at the dinner table because the soup was too salty, reviling and insulting [their] mother.” He set his children, four sons and one daughter, to work in the tavern and shop.

Despite their poverty, Anton Chekhov still began school at the age of eight. When he was 16, his father, mother, and two younger sibling moved to Moscow to escape their debt.  For the next three years, Chekhov studied, tutored, and did odd jobs in order to support himself. At 19, he was accepted into the Moscow University’s medical school. Chekhov arrived in Moscow only to find his living in the basement of a building in what was essentially Moscow’s red-light district of the time. His father was rarely at home, working almost all the time. At this point, Chekhov became the practical head of the family. Simultaneously attending university and writing to support his parents and siblings, his brother Alexander began to call him “Father Antosha,” only partially in jest. Thus, Chekhov’s writing career began out of necessity. Chekhov wrote for the publication The Dragonfly starting in 1880, for a weekly magazine called Fragments starting in 1882, and then for New Times in 1885. With his newfound salary, he was able to move his family into a better home. The year 1884 saw Chekhov graduate from medical school and publish his first collection of short stories, Tales of Melpome.

Throughout this time, Chekhov had been trying his hand at playwriting. His first play, Fatherless, had been composed in 1877, though Chekhov had not written it for publishing. In 1881, he gave a copy of his play Platanov to the actress Marya Yermolova.  He received it back through the mail without any word from the actress. After The Wood Demon was presented, A.P. Lensky, a prominent actor of this era, told Chekhov to give up on writing plays and that his talent lay elsewhere. This play, however, was to later to provide the basis for Uncle Vanya. Despite these disheartening events, Chekhov continued playwriting. The end result was The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, to name the most successful. While not every one of these polished, full-length plays had initial positive receptions — after the opening of The Seagull, Chekhov was so humiliated that he swore that he would never again “write plays or have them acted” — they have left long and distinctive legacies in literature and theater.

Chekhov spent his final years as a wealthy and well-known man. However, the author and playwright was slowly dying of consumption. Chekhov moved back and forth from Yalta with Olga Knipper, a young actress whom he married in May of 1901. The year that the 25th anniversary of his career in literature was celebrated, Chekhov died in Germany.  It was July 2, 1904. Knipper reported that on the day he died, Chekhov had kept her entertained with invented stories about a resort and its inhabitants.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a son, a brother, a husband, and a writer. He wrote about what he knew, and preferred to form his own worldview rather than to buy into the many philosophies of his time. During his own lifetime, Chekhov had already become a household name. To this day, Anton Chekhov’s plays are performed worldwide in venues ranging from acting classes to professional theaters.

( Source: http://unveilingvanya.wordpress.com )

Uncle Vanya adapter DAVID ALAN MAMET (born Nov. 30, 1947) is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director. His plays include Race, Glengarry Glen Ross (1984 Pulitzer Prize and New York Drama Critics Circle Award, 2005 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play), American Buffalo, Boston Marriage, November, Speed-The-Plow and The Cryptogram. His film credits – as both director and screenwriter – include House of Games, Things Change, Homicide, Oleanna, The Spanish Prisoner, The Winslow Boy, State and Main, Heist, Spartan and Redbelt. His other screenplays include Glengarry Glen Ross, The Verdict, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Untouchables, Hoffa, Ronin, Wag the Dog, The Edge and Hannibal.

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Weathervane Playhouse and its dedicated volunteers offer vital performing arts resources for the people of Northeastern Ohio. We create exciting and thought-provoking shows with impressive production values. Through educational programs and volunteer opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds, Weathervane serves the theater community, our patrons and our volunteers.

The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this program with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, education excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.

Weathervane Playhouse’s 2013-2014 Season Support Provided by:
Akron Community Foundation
Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation
Kenneth L. Calhoun Charitable Trust (KeyBank, Trustee)
OMNOVA Solutions Foundation
Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation
Sisler McFawn Foundation
Ohio Arts Council


Janis Harcar
Director of Advancement
Weathervane Playhouse
330-836-2626 X16
jharcar at weathervaneplayhouse.com



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