Andrew Scott in One-Man VANYA — Review

The two things that work surprisingly best in Vanya, the one-man adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s undying play about the ennui plaguing a well-to-do family, seem almost tangential to the original writer’s intentions. (The expansive charm and capability of Andrew Scott, who stars in the piece’s stateside run at the Lucille Lortel after its London premiere, is not a surprise, and there are few actors who could shepherd an audience through as trying a time as this can be.) One is the way Simon Stephens, who adapts the original and is credited as this version’s co-creator, alongside director Sam Yates and set designer Rosanna Viz, calls the bluff on narrative writers’ schizophrenia.

As Scott flits between characters, affecting all sorts of campy tones to convey their distinctions while holding onto Chekhov’s overarching voice, one is presented with the multiplicitous, one-sided conversations all writers have; the ridiculousness of boomeranging a (if it’s good, clear) viewpoint through different personas. The other is more phenomenological: it’s easy to wonder what a play such as this, famous for its dreary exploration of futility and malaise, could benefit from being enacted by a single performer. The answer is not much, at least not in the way of revelation or insight. But in funneling every color of its characters’ languor through one prism, the piece achieves a kind of meta-commentary on sadness – an inverse of the lesson immediately imparted in Anna Karenina, another immortal piece of Russian literature, that every unhappy individual is alike.

Vanya is in performance through May 11, 2025 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Christopher Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.