‘Uncle Vanya’ review: Steve Carell’s Broadway play is funny, not feeling
nypost.comTwo hours and 30 minutes. At the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, 150 West 65th Street.When Steve Carell emerges from behind a bench onstage at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, the crowd giggles automatically at the “Office” star.Now playing the hapless title role in Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” the revival of which opened Wednesday night on Broadway, the actor’s presence gets laughs before he does much of anything.
That’s a rare gift for any performer — think Michael Richards as Kramer on “Seinfeld.” And my noting of that unconditional love is not meant to diminish the talented Carell, who, making his Broadway debut, turns out to be a splendid theater actor who is shrewdly cast as the bitter rural Russian.But the audience’s three-camera sit-com chuckle does reveal this “Vanya”’s chief shortcoming straightaway.
While the production has got the jokes down pat, it is quite a bit shakier when it comes to the pathos and hardship that spring from them.
Chekhov’s 1897 play, when done properly, is always funny, but the story is also a lot more than that yuks.These depressed Slavs’ unrequited love and unrealized potential should be, simultaneously, hilarious and upsetting.
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