VANYA ON 42ND STREET

Rip It Up, Issue 219, 1 November 1995, Page 46

VANYA ON 42ND STREET

Director: Louis Malle

Louis Malle assembles his troupe of players in the ruined New Amsterdam Theatre — a setting which evokes images of decay, nostalgia and danger. We have a glimpse of the actors in ‘real life’, and taste something of the brief joys and disillusionments that come out of endless auditioning. With little warning, Andre Gregory is marshalling the cast into a performance of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. The film came together as a result of Malle’s desire to catch Gregory’s unconventional theatrical presentation. As in his 1981 My Dinner with Andre, which was basically a dinner conversation between Gregory and Wallace Shawn (Uncle Vanya in the new film), Malle is not afraid to give himself over completely to the expressive faces and personalities of his actors, as the camera effortlessly glides around them.

Comparisons with Michael Blakemore’s recent A Month in the Country are inevitable, as the Australian film also derived from Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. With Malle — thanks to playwright David Mamet — the characterisation is so much more subtle (Larry Pine’s Dr Astrov, in particular, is a more beguiling tyrant than Blakemore’s old man, and Julianne Moore’s Yelena is particularly radiant). WILLIAM DART