Ascher's Uncle Vanya Returns to US

The Sydney Theatre Company will perform the play with the same cast as last year, featuring Cate Blanchett, Richard Roxburgh and Hugo Weaving.

 

Of course, everything is completely the same, Ascher said on the phone from New York.

 

The premiere on Saturday will be preceded by two rehearsals open to the public and the play will be performed a total of 10 times in New York.

 

Ascher said the company was invited to the New York festival after last year?s performances got standing ovations at Washington?s Kennedy Center. Like last year, the director once again travelled to Sydney to rehearse with the troupe ahead of the US performances. 

 

?This performance has not been shown anywhere since last year and the Sydney Theatre Company is not a repertory theatre but instead plays pieces in series, therefore we held a week of rehearsals to recap. But we were not using the original sets because the stage props stayed in America in order to save on transport costs,? Ascher said.

 

The rehearsals were held without costumes and on temporary sets at the National Dramatic Arts in Sydney. The actors only have three days in New York to prepare for the play, of which two are rehearsals open to the public.

 

Last August, when the play was performed in Washington, The New York Times and The Washington Post gave it prime space in their culture supplements.

 

?Staged by the Hungarian director Tamas Ascher ? and featuring a brilliant daredevil performance by Cate Blanchett as a chipped trophy wife ? this Uncle Vanya gets under your skin like no other I have seen,? said the critic Ben Brantley in The New York Times. He added that Ascher and his company achieve ?a sort of platonic ideal of farce?.

 

?In director Tamas Ascher?s inspired conception, even the bugs we hear whirring around the inhabitants? faces are calculated to drive up the harassment index, the sense that the household is being driven to distraction by forces minuscule and monumental,? said Peter Marks in The Washington Post.

 

?Chekhov?s gift for illuminating the essence of each of his characters? poignant, comic struggles is magnified in Ascher?s treatment. The scenes crackle with spontaneity, and as a result, you often find yourself laughing at bits of behavior because you recognize them as both theatrically inventive and true,? Marks said, adding that ?as Ascher shows us in his transformative production, the playwright?s pen could contain dynamite.?

 

The dramaturge for the performance was Anna Lengyel, the set designer Zsolt Khell and the costume designer Györgyi Szakács.