MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Laugh-out-loud funny and Chekhov are not words I have often had occasion to use in the same sentence. I've always associated the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov more with Russian misery, with frustrated longings and crushed ambitions and, of course, Chekhov's gun - the principle that if you were going to introduce an element in a drama, it must be necessary - that if you're going to have a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it needs to go off in the second act. And if it isn't going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there. Well, in the production of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" now playing here in Washington, the gun goes off, and it is fired by none other than Uncle Vanya, played by Hugh Bonneville, who I have the immense pleasure of announcing is in the studio with me now. Hi.
HUGH BONNEVILLE: Hi.
KELLY: You are not known for shoot-em-up roles, and I'm not sure that's...
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: ...What we would call this, but was there some satisfaction in playing such very physical comedy drama?
BONNEVILLE: Yes. As you say, you know, the Chekhov oeuvre is often played in rather a dour manner, staring into the middle distance saying, I must go to Moscow. And...
KELLY: (Laughter) And I'm hungry...
BONNEVILLE: Yeah. Yes...
KELLY: ...And cold.
BONNEVILLE: ...I'm hungry and cold, and my life's miserable.
KELLY: (Laughter).
BONNEVILLE: But within all those thoughts is utter absurdity. And so I think that's really what we've enjoyed exploring in the production, is the fun and the humor of it because none of these characters are villains. And they're all flawed, and they're all very recognizable, which is why I think his plays last.
KELLY: For those who don't know "Uncle Vanya," have not had the pleasure of seeing it, introduce us to the role you're playing. Who is Uncle Vanya?
BONNEVILLE: Uncle Vanya is really a - well, he would consider himself a potential Schopenhauer or Dostoevsky or a wonderful writer, but actually he's done absolutely nothing about it. And he's very quick to criticize everybody else around him and how he could have been a contender, but actually, he's safest in the world of doing his ex-brother-in-law's accounts, really, on this estate - this crumbling estate somewhere in Russia, with his niece, Sonya. And they run the estate on behalf of the professor, as he's called, who has deigned to visit from Moscow with his gorgeous second wife, with whom Vanya is besotted. It's a play in which very little happens, but so much does. It's a sort of classic sitcom in so far as at the end of the play, you're back to the very beginning. You know, every - the status quo has been completely reinstated.
KELLY: One of my favorite descriptions of how you play it came in the LA Times - I don't know if you saw this review. The quote is, "Bonneville, resembling a canceled journalist wallowing in sarcasm with a bottle of booze, lends Vanya a flailing, self-deprecating levity." The canceled journalist wallowing with a bottle of booze sets - cuts a little close to the bone for those of us in the newsroom...
BONNEVILLE: (Laughter).
KELLY: ...Where you and I are speaking. But how do you prepare to play a character who is goofy, has done not a lot with his life, is often drunk and yet is often quite sweet and quite sweetly in love?
BONNEVILLE: I don't know. You just, you know, explore it moment by moment. And it's all down to the adaptation, really, the translation. And when Simon Godwin, the director, and I were first talking about the project, we agreed that we should go away and read five or six different versions because every adapter brings their own personality and their own thoughts and often slightly restructures either scenes or beats within a scene. So we went away and read - I read, you know, Christopher Hampton, Richard Nelson, David Hare, David Mamet, Michael Frayn, and then we - and Conor McPherson.
KELLY: And you're finding little pieces that work or don't in each of them?
BONNEVILLE: Absolutely. And they all have their own wonderful rhythms and individuality. But when we re-met a few months later and we sort of went three, two, one, and we both said Conor McPherson at the same time and agreed that this 2020 adaptation that was done in the West End in London, starring Toby Jones, was the one that felt most accessible and nimble and would speak to our audience in the right way. And Conor is wonderful at highlighting, as I say, the absurdity of the characters. And so the wit and the humor that he brings with his sort of Irish sensibilities really play on the almost Samuel Beckett-like desperate humor of Astrov and Vanya. In particular, there's a scene in the second act where Sonya describes their drunken fooling about as, you're just like two tramps. And you just immediately think of "Waiting For Godot" and these two guys, you know, living in this eternal eternity, doing...
KELLY: Right (laughter).
BONNEVILLE: ...Nothing but just sort of chewing the cud.
KELLY: (Laughter).
BONNEVILLE: And so there is...
KELLY: Wearing soiled T-shirts...
BONNEVILLE: Yeah, yeah...
KELLY: ...And...
BONNEVILLE: ...Soiled T-shirts and (laughter).
KELLY: ...Four-day-old beards, yeah.
BONNEVILLE: Yeah. So in terms of - to answer your question about three hours ago, we just - it was really just playing in the sandpit of the rehearsal room with Simon, who's very liberating. And, you know, you'd do some daft idea, and he'd say, no, go further, go further.
KELLY: There's such an informality to it. I almost didn't notice when the play started, which is a strange thing to say. But it's not like there's a dramatic curtain rising. You, Hugh Bonneville, are wandering around in the audience, changing your shoes. There's one actor who pedals up to the stage on a bike and gets off and throws the bike down, and here we go - we're off. And then I thought, OK, oh, we've actually begun.
BONNEVILLE: (Laughter) Yes. Well, that really emerged out of me saying to Simon, you know, I'm not going to be doing an American accent. The American actors aren't going to be doing a British accent. What we don't want is the curtain going up and saying, we are in 1900s Russia, and the audience in any way going, well, hang on. How come - how are they related if they sound so different? Or, oh, we've got actors from different parts of the country.
KELLY: Just to be clear, you play Uncle Vanya sounding exactly....
BONNEVILLE: Yeah.
KELLY: ...As you sound talking to me now.
BONNEVILLE: Yeah, exactly.
KELLY: English accent.
BONNEVILLE: Yeah, exactly.
KELLY: Was that a discussion at all?
BONNEVILLE: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said the bad version would be that we have a wicker basket on stage with lots of costumes in and the stage manager says, right, today you're playing Astrov and you're playing Yelena, or whatever. So we're just actors, storytellers - whatever.
KELLY: They make fun of you at one point on the stage.
BONNEVILLE: Yeah.
KELLY: Your accent - was it sad roses?
BONNEVILLE: Sad roses. Autumn roses.
KELLY: Autumn roses.
BONNEVILLE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So really, yes, our in - our way into the play was to really, you know, say, look, we're just a bunch of actors putting on a play, and join us if you will.
KELLY: Yeah. Among the lines that had me laughing out loud - as you mentioned, the play is set in 1900, and there's a line, everything is awful now, but don't worry. A hundred years from now, a couple hundred years from now, people will have figured it all out. People will be so happy. That got a very big laugh in Washington in 2025.
BONNEVILLE: Yes, absolutely. It does. And, you know, when I didn't - I mean, I'd seen many Chekhovs over the years, but I'd never acted in any. And I'd never actually seen or read "Uncle Vanya" until I started this project. And I remember reading the very first of those many translations I mentioned and thinking, oh, well, this writer's having fun putting in stuff about climate change and all that. No, it's Chekhov. Chekhov was writing about deforestation and the dangers of ripping up the earth and the soil. And yes, these references to the fact that in a hundred years' time, everyone will have sorted it all out. We'll all have been forgotten, but they'll be saying, what a shame they were all so sad back then. And yeah, we all recognize that human fallibility is as mucked up now as it was when he wrote the play.
KELLY: Well, this has been an absolute delight. Hugh Bonneville - he is starring right now in the title role of the Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of "Uncle Vanya." Thank you.
BONNEVILLE: Thank you very much.
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