FringeReview UK 2026
Uncle Vanya
Lewes Little Theatre
Genre: classical, Comedy, Costume, Dark Comedy, Drama, European Theatre, Fringe Theatre, Theatre, Translation
Venue: Lewes Little Theatre, Lancaster Street
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Exactly 43 years ago Uncle Vanya was produced at Lewes Little. That July 1983 production was my introduction to Chekhov. This new production directed by Darren Heather till July 4 is – as you’d expect – very different.
An absorbing Uncle Vanya: fleet, energised, sharply-etched. Its comedic suddenness blows the English patina off; which – mostly – lets the tragi-comedy speak plain.
Review
Exactly 43 years ago Uncle Vanya was produced at Lewes Little. That July 1983 production was my introduction to Chekhov. It’s haunted my imaginings of Vanya ever since. This new production directed by Darren Heather till July 4 is – as you’d expect – very different.
Though Heather tells us it’s informed by the Toby Jones-led Uncle Vanya directed by Ian Rickson in lockdown, he adds other homages. Refracted through experiences of Andrew Scott’s Vanya and Nina and Moses Raine’s Russian-informed Gorky Summerfolk at the National’s Olivier earlier this year, its tone would have startled a 1983 audience. But this one wept with laughter at the swearing, physical comedy and gulphs of pathos. One of these landed where the 1983 didn’t. Now the gun’s heard offstage. Last time the audience laughed as Vanya blasted away in full view. Tonally that didn’t work at all. This time there was no mistake.
Heather starts with Marian Fell’s 1916 translation, edited by David Parton. Which he’s liberally updated echoing moments of Scott. Heather’s also inspired by the tone of Conor McPherson’s sleeked-down, sinewy version for Rickson. And the tone of Raines’ translation. This retrofits Chekhov through his successor Gorky in Summerfolk: a play Gorky wrote by 1904; the year The Cherry Orchard was premiered and Chekhov died. More sweary than the Raines, perhaps too much so for the period (though not the audience, who loved it), it zips by at two-hours-35. Yet it lands with an authentic tang. This is a version others could use.
Heather’s set foregrounds a comfy drawing-room with projected backdrops of forests through bay windows, or glimpses of dim night-spiked trees. Costumes are predominantly a worn off-white. Paul Carpenter’s lighting picks out night-time moments of repose; and the sound, including Russian late-romantic piano music, also picked out by Elena. These swirl round a naturalistic pace that cuts to exhilarating. Which allows the comedy Chekhov claimed and less Anglo-Chekhovian melancholy.
Led by Robert Hamilton’s truculent Vanya, more Scott than Jones, the cast hum with inner comic timing. Jokes are sharpened, absurdities pounced on, glowerings genuinely dangerous. Hamilton is so commanding you wonder at the shabby Vanya who meekly undertook 25 years of drudgery. Casting against type though has led Heather to springboard the Vanya aesthetic to levels of farce. Yet Hamilton releases pathos where it’s needed. Its suddenness is very Russian indeed.
This is bounced back from Simon Hellyer’s charismatic, equally-energised Doctor Astrov. Hellyer’s Astrov mixes self-disgust at failures, with sympathy for the poor he treats and the forests they burn. He’s palpably a visionary ahead of his time. This contrasts with his drinking. When he lets go with Vanya and Elena in very different ways you see the man he might become.
Hellyer shows Astrov, when in his stride, explaining forests or ordering Vanya to hand over the bottle. His dash, voice and presence make you believe two young women fall in love with Astrov. To Nanna, Astrov laments his life’s slipped over ten years. Bleak moments sting with regret, though not self-shaming, when Astrov’s drunk.
Heather orchestrates wild moments. A sodden Vanya expresses misery and in a flash he and Astrov whirl each other round in Aidan McConville’s “When we gather brothers”. It’s a drunken folk-dance (to the guitar of Jason Lever’s Ilya ‘Waffles’ Telegin): baying to wake the professor. And Sonya’s look when Astrov emerges with his shirt off is an exquisite mix of disgust and arousal. Looks telegraphs all you need to know of a character’s conflict. The cast are so connected they’re like a bunch of psychic Chrysalids out of John Wyndham.
Lorna Francis’ Sonya bursts with being 22, so is more heart-rending. Francis speaks with her eyes, possessing the Chekhovian gift of mixed delight, fear, outrage, sorrow and stoicism. Pointedly unglamorous, a shivering foil to Elena, her every response to Astrov’s presence, even imminence speaks of a woman whom the whole household knows is in love.
Francis’ Sonya counters quicksilver giddiness with firmness scolding her father, Astrov, Vayna by turns. She shows Sonya’s intelligence juggling others’ needs with her own desires. It’s countered with moments of repose with Elena. The sudden release of feeling between them is magical, as Elena lies in Sonya’s lap: an analogue to their relationship. And there’s her ardent consolatory speech to Vanya at the end: the one point this production could slow a little.
By contrast Jasmine Chance Ramsay’s Elena isn’t quite the spoilt, bored receiver of compliments she can be. Chance Ramsay begins by drawling entitlement but quickly moves from this when she talks to Francis’ Sonya.
Chance Ramsay’s quick attraction – she’s pointedly mesmerised with Hellyer from the start, eyes following him – is also most open when with Francis. Their chemistry and sudden confiding is heartwarming; and produces in Chance Ramsay an agony of self-recrimination when Elena tasks herself with Sonya’s hopeless love. It’s clear this Elena bursts with potential to love and express herself: with people near her own age she can. It renders her entombed marriage the more absurd. Chance Ramsay conveys exasperated threads of tenderness for a husband she loved once superficially, and can’t hide her repulsion.
This Professor Serebryakov (Bob Murdock) is a fud of hypochondria but also, here, shrewd self-awareness. His cut-through whine and contempt is spit-perfect. Serebryakov knows he’s repellent to his beautiful wife, apologises for it but also accusatory – as Elena points out. Desiccated, he mourns and accepts it. No detail of hypochondria’s lost, but Murdock won’t guy him. He hangs him out to dry like shrivelled fruit: buzzed about by a waspish voice.
Patricia Ritchings’ Mariya in her radiant devotion and shards of intellectual endeavour exalts her son-in-law (whom obviously she should have married). And lands fusty literary jokes. “The Government Inspector” she quips. “Gogol” she implies with scorn. (Serebryakov compares his gout to Tugenev’s angina.) Ritchings hovers round like an older muse, scorning her son Vanya’s scorn.
By contrast Donna Thornton’s Nanna radiates repose and purpose: to keep peace, exude love for Sonya and Astrov above all, stabilise routine. Thornton draws space to herself, commands her corner and alters pitch and rhythm whenever she intervenes.
There’s detail in Lever’s twittering, peace-loving Telegin, flustered by being thought a hanger-on: scooping scraps of acknowledgment. Delighted when enjoined to play his guitar he’s terrified of rows. Lever’s mix of dog-like-devotion to an ex-wife and self-defeating morals render his portrayal squirmingly exquisite.
An absorbing Uncle Vanya, Heather’s traversal never seems hurried. Yet it’s fleet, energised, sharply-etched. Its comedic suddenness blows the English patina off; which – mostly – lets the tragi-comedy speak plain. Vintage Lewes Little.
Stage Manager Estelle Carpenter, ASMs Susan Heather, Joanne Cull, Wardrobe LLT Wardrobe Team, Set Builds LLT Set Build Team, Photography Keith Gilbert and Phil Gazzard, Trailer Production Team Nathan Croft, One Studio Picture.
