APT's 'Uncle Vanya' drowns existential despair in vodka

Lindsay Christians, The Cap Times

If Yelena Andreyevna Serebryakova lived here and now instead of in rural Russia in the late 19th century, she would be a social media influencer. And she’d be bad at it.

Yelena, the disaffected young wife who throws the house into chaos in Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” has no passions. When her stepdaughter Sonya suggests she could help on the estate, teach kids or care for the sick, Yelena scoffs.

“I’m not qualified to do any of that! Plus none of it interests me,” she sniffs. “You want me to start handing out literature to peasants?”

If Ken’s job is beach, Yelena’s job is beauty. Yelena is pretty and bored, and as Sonya points out, her unhappiness is catching.

Brenda DeVita, American Players Theatre’s artistic director for over a decade, leads this summer’s production of “Uncle Vanya,” where nihilism threatens to win the day. In her director’s notes, DeVita points to the “stagnation and disillusionment” that smothers these 19th-century Russian characters’ “quiet yearning for a better life.”

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