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The Review - THEATRE by JOSH LOEB
Published: 26 June 2008

Alex Hunter and Elena Knight

Chekhov’s small town Russia brought to life

UNCLE VANYA
Lion & Unicorn Theatre

ACT Provocateur is made up of the kind of thespians it is impossible not to admire.
In a small venue above a Kentish Town pub the theatre company has staged productions that have consistently impressed in terms of everything from the acting to the costumes and sets.
At first glance the prosaic Lion and Unicorn might seem an unlikely place to enjoy classic drama. But while audiences are small, zest and ambition always abound with Act Provocateur.
Recent months have seen a romp through Chekhov’s oeuvre to characteristic effect. Such consistency cannot be due to mere coincidence; attention to detail and a love of theatre are at work.
The latest drama privileged enough to receive such treatment is Uncle Vanya. It is a play about grudges harboured by members of a bourgeois Russian family in a backwater of the empire.
The plot swerves around the relationship between Vanya and Alexander.
The latter is an elderly professor who regards aging with a horror so ferociously conveyed by Gil Sutherland as to be alternately frightening and comical.
Vanya, the brother of Alexander’s deceased wife, once admired Alexander but has come to loathe him for the disregard he pays his family in his pursuit of scholarly fame.
Sub-plots are woven in as the tension builds to a crescendo. Alex Hunter stands out as charismatic Doctor Astrov, whose feverish eulogies about forests and fauna enchant Sonya, the play’s most tragic character.
This is a story about people learning to live with the realities of their time and place – dreary small town Russia at the beginning of the last century. Tight and professional, this production does justice to Chekhov’s art.
Until July 13
020 7485 9897

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