Word of the Day: Apothegm
'Uncle Vanya' is the perfect place for 'apothegm'.
apothegm
ap·o·thegm /ˈapəˌTHem/
noun
It’s true that the professor — here called Alexander instead of the Russian mouthful Aleksandr Vladimirovich Serebryakov — has thrown the household into disarray with his demands and pains and unearned hauteur. But his wife, here called Elena, has been, if possible, even more disruptive.
Beauty and boredom in close quarters will do that. If Vanya is a malodorous dog she easily shoos away, a local doctor, Astrov, proves the more tempting companion. He is intelligent, cynical and passionate, at first about ecology only, but soon about Elena as well.
Vanya is usually the linchpin of the plot. His envy of both Alexander and Astrov, his crush on Elena, his resentment of his mother (who delights in Alexander’s every apothegm), and his heedlessness of his niece’s needs (Sonia is in love with Astrov) all return to ding him like a comically inerrant boomerang. No wonder the role has been catnip for big Broadway hams like Ralph Richardson, George C. Scott, Derek Jacobi and Nicol Williamson.
But Carell is no ham: He’s precise, natural, unimposing. That’s a reasonable choice given the text in vitro, which reads as a comedy of anticlimax. But in vivo, onstage, it should be, as well, a tragedy of inertia. For that you need a dominant Vanya with a rageful inner life.
| Jesse Green, Review: Steve Carell as the 50-Year-Old Loser in a Comic ‘Uncle Vanya’