Nothing makes me more excited about a theatre production than hearing a director talk passionately and intelligently about their chosen text. In a conversation with Cherwell, director Joshua Robey’s understanding of Uncle Vanya and his belief both in his team and vision for the show shone through.
First produced in 1898, Uncle Vanya is one of Anton Chekhov’s most loved plays. Set in the Russian countryside, the text focuses on the visit of an old professor, Alexander, and his younger wife, Elena, to the rural estate left to him by his first wife. John (Vanya), the brother of the professor’s first wife, and the local doctor, Michael, both become enamoured by Yelena, while Sonya – the professor’s daughter – develops unrequited feelings for the doctor. The play has had several high-profile stage adaptations in the recent past, including most famously the 2023 production starring Andrew Scott.
So putting on Uncle Vanya comes with baggage: it is a canonical text constantly being performed and reimagined. Naturally one of my first questions then was why, as a student theatre company, they should choose to perform it now. I was curious as to what Fennec Fox Productions thought they could bring to the table that was new or interesting. On one hand, Robey is very interested in character; he says about his attraction to the play: “Chekhov sort of inaugurates […] a new kind of style that’s very heightenedly real – in the sense that these characters are treated as people and not as symbols. They don’t really have a symbolic function in the play. They are people who are sort of achingly miscommunicating and trying to connect to each other [sic].”
This concern with character translates to the team’s rehearsals. Walking into a small, crowded room in Worcester College during an emotional scene, I was immediately struck by how focused and grounded in each other’s performances the actors were. The sudden presence of a stranger observing them seemed to have no effect at all. I even felt bad for punctuating their taut silences with my typing. The scene was a demanding one, with the actress playing Sonya having to crescendo into a sob, and yet both the performers and the director felt comfortable repeating this excerpt again and again. The rehearsal had been going on for several hours at that point, but this wasn’t felt at all.
Crucially, a high level of perfectionism was demanded by everyone involved. It was not just Robey interrupting to break down sections of text, but the actors themselves constantly trying to get to the root of their character’s psychology, questioning their motivations and intentions. Speaking to the Assistant Directors, Alys Young and Ivana Clapperton, about the cast, this was made very clear. Young told Cherwell: “Now, they are asking the minutiae of how they would react in this specific situation and it’s a testament to how deep the actors think about their craft; that they’re asking questions and just trying to learn as much as they can about these people.”
However, there was also an obvious feeling of camaraderie and fun about the rehearsal. The actors constantly applauded each other, obviously supportive of one another’s performances. After one particularly successful take on the scene, there was a moment of silence before the crew and cast alike broke into happy discussion of how well they thought it had gone, the highlight of which was Robey’s comment: “I love it when scenes upset me. This is a team of criers, who are very good at crying.”
However, this attention to detail was not reserved for actors and characters. Speaking about the relevance of the play, Robey said: “It is one of the first plays that really engages with the relation between humanity and the environment. Not just that humans are potentially destroying the environment, but that that destruction then has an effect back on the humans and their psychology. And you see these characters who are all profoundly upset and depressed and they don’t quite know why and it’s seemingly to do with what they’ve done to nature.”
In line with this emphasis on the text’s contemporary relevance, the team have chosen to use Robert Icke’s translation – paying for rights when they otherwise might not have had to. Robey explained this choice: “It has this wonderful clarity to it that you don’t feel like you’re watching a classic play, you don’t feel like you are watching something through that layer of otherness. It doesn’t feel distant, it feels very immediate.”
Environment, atmosphere, and intimacy being clearly key concerns of the production, I was curious to understand why Fennec Fox Productions had gone for such an ambitious venue. The Keble O’Reilly, where it is being performed, is a large space and most student theatre productions don’t have the budget for overly elaborate sets. Robey justified the choice by explaining that although intimacy is key, other venues like the Burton Taylor Studio would have simply been too small: “It felt like we needed that space above people’s heads. The O’Reily had that space where it felt like people were in this enclosure, but then not hemmed in. It feels like they are in this sort of mini biome.”
When discussing the set itself, Robey acknowledged that many Chekhov productions lean into building richly furnished rooms but that also means that many end up having just one built space. Fennec Fox Productions has decided to go the opposite way, which Robey describes: “The set is a non-literal space. This is theatre taking place, we don’t necessarily need to see everything that would be in the space and instead this is about character and people interacting, so it’s actually quite unadorned.” He reveals that the set will include a Cornelia Parker inspired installation piece, in which lighting will also play a key role. The lighting team, sometimes playing with non-naturalistic lighting, Robey explains, will be important in evoking the idea of humanity’s relation to the forest: “You’ll have to see it to see what that means!”
You can watch Uncle Vanya at the Keble O’Reilly Theatre from the 29th October to 2nd November, 7:30pm (W3).
