Uncle Vanya

Uncle Vanya Uncle Vanya. By Anton Chekhov. Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Angus Bowmer Theatre, Ashland, Oregon. 12 August 1998.

In the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya the set so thoroughly incorporated the playwright's psychology that the set pieces themselves determined the entire gestus of the play's characters in production. Scenic designer Robert Brill has made this production a tribute to the playwright's characterization techniques. In Chekhov's works characters are separated from each other emotionally while sharing a common physical space that is haunted by memories of the past. These ghosted memories crowd Brill's minimalist set to the extant that even an empty stage may appear full. Director Libby Appel does Brill's set pieces justice by allowing her actors use of the set's multiple divisions to establish their characters' ambivalence about intimacy within a confined domestic space.

The downstage areas of Brill's design sports conventional Chekhovian decor: fading upper-class, late nineteenth century furniture with the requisite grand piano placed center stage as a focal point. The peripheral areas of this set add the crucial elements of layering and division. The entrance to the wings on both sides is marked by one set of wide door frames angled on perspective sightlines, and near center stage there appears another high wall with a different set of door frames, complete with shuttered French doors. This middle divider is matched by other walls on both sides with...