Chekhov in Westwood If you have a rare opportunity to try your hand three times at the same thing, by the third time you should have it right. Not so, as proves the case of Chekov's Uncle Vanya directed by Michael Langham at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. This is Langham's third production of Uncle Vanya during his 60-year -long career as a director. According to the stagebill one performance took place in 1980 at ACT in San Francisco and the second in 1997 at Atlantic Theatre Festival in Nova Scotia. I have neither seen nor read about the earlier productions, but the current Langham effort at the Geffen Playhouse I found shamefully unsatisfying.

After seeing Uncle Vanya performed in 1899, Tolstoy had complained that it is a play in which nothing really happens from beginning till end. And he was right. What takes place on stage is a subtle, inner drama of the characters stuck in stagnant, hopelessly oppressive circumstances, struggling to make sense of their lives. Consequently, strong performances of individual actors and the overall atmosphere created on the stage are elemental to the success of a play such as this. Under Langham's direction the first act drags mercilessly without establishing either one of the two crucial elements. This is not only attributable to the director's flawed vision or craft, but also to the unfortunate casting of Robert Foxworth in the title role. During the course of the play, Chekhov's leading character, Vanya, goes through a gamut of feelings, from love, and tenderness, and jealousy, to restlessness, and a despair, born of an overwhelming sense of disappointment and waste. Foxworth's treatment of Vanya lacks both passion and depth. His amorous antics and ineptitude are only mildly amusing; his desperation seems to suddenly come out of nowhere. Foxworth misses the bitter undercurrent embedded in Vanya's tormented character, which, later, makes Vanya's violence plausible.

By contrast the two female lead characters played by Christina Haag (Yelena) and Megan Follows (Sonya) positively stand out in this very uneven production. Megan Follows, who is Langham's Canadian import, portrays Sonya with great sensitivity and straightforward emotional honesty. Her performance is a masterful interplay of eagerness and control. Both Hagg and Follows are able to establish a rare intimacy between their characters, which draws the audience into the true but fleeting suspension of disbelief. Chekhov's humor in Uncle Vanya is of the droll, whimsical kind - both subtle and tenuous. Unquestionably, it is a challenge to successfully dramatize situations or language, where humor is barely perceptible, and Langham's production of Uncle Vanya does not rise to the challenge. In Langham's hands the dramatic pinnacle of the play is turned into a crude farce. As in early slapstick comedies chaos reigns, everyone chases everyone else. Neil Jampolis' set design and lighting are also a handicap. They fail to suggest the existence of the world outside the drab confines of a country house, beyond the simplistic clucking chickens and the sound of thunder. Chekhov's bored and restless characters are all pinning for this abstract place, which lies somewhere beyond the house and the farm, where Dr. Astrov plants his abstract trees. Days are passing, seasons change, lives waste away, yet the audience is not aware of the progression of time. Neither the lighting nor the scenery beyond the windows gives any indication of what is taking place outside. It's no wonder that the urgency that compels Vanya's reckless act comes as a complete surprise. Unfortunately for the play and the audience the staging elements and the director's and actors' craft never quite come together to give justice to the complexity and humanity of this play, its wistful melancholy, droll humor, and its hopeless despair. Chekhov once wrote: "Life is an insoluble problem." For the director Michael Langham Uncle Vanya seems to be it.

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