Shaw Festival’s ‘Uncle Vanya’ offers melancholy by the центнер Bob Abelman Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal Member, International Association of Theatre Critics Anton Chekhov sure is a buzz-kill. It’s been said that, through stories like “The Seagull” and “The Three Sisters,” the late-19th century Russian playwright explores the depths of human nature by crossing the fine line between comedy and tragedy. Perhaps, but his “Uncle Vanya” certainly tilts toward the tragic. It takes place on the deteriorating country estate of the widower Serebryakov (David Schurmann), an aging academic who now lives in the city. Running the estate is his daughter Sonya (Marla McLean) and his brother-in-law Vanya (Neil Barclay), who use the earnings from the property’s farm to support Serebryakov. He returns with the intention of selling the estate to help support his new, much younger wife Yelena (Moya O’Connell), whose beauty and disengagement entrances everyone. The reason it does is because everyone in this play is needy and hopeless and yearning for the one thing they will never obtain, and they see Yelena as the source of their satisfaction: Serebrayakov seeks respect, Vanya wants to be appreciated, Sonya desires love, the country doctor Astrov (Patrick McManus) pines for any kind of connection, and so on. As for Yelena, she wants everything she has sacrificed by marrying this old, ill, self-involved man, which is nothing that can be supplied by anyone in the room. Shakespeare famously wrote “all the world’s a stage.” For Chekhov, all the world’s a stage of chronic depression. Artistic director Jackie Maxwell not only selected this challenging play for her final season at the Shaw, and placed herself as director, but chose Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Annie Baker’s adaptation of the work. For more of this review, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/.