‘Uncle Vanya’ Goes Mod in Wisconsin

In Matthew Wilder’s far-reaching but uneven staging, “Uncle Vanya: Scenes From Country Life” at Playwrights’ Arena alternates between the galvanic and the soporific.

Paul Schmidt’s updated translation, supposedly set in a small Wisconsin town, keeps the essence of the play intact. A bold innovator, Wilder obviously has fun playing with Schmidt’s contemporary references. Often, Wilder brings Chekhov’s tragicomic meditation to brilliant fruition, in crackling, intense passages of pointed anachronism and satire. Just as frequently, though, he intersperses the action with so many ponderous silences that you want to hop the next freight to Moscow. And you might just arrive there before this play’s over.

Wilder succeeds in making the audience feel every beat of the characters’ frustration and ennui, their thwarted desires, their rural isolation. By ignoring the theatrical conventions of timing, and in some cases of blocking, Wilder attempts to blur the distinction between artifice and reality. He thoroughly immerses us in the play’s action, as if it were transpiring in actual time. But when pregnant pauses extend interminably, however “real” they may seem, empathy flags and claustrophobia takes over.

Still, some wonderful performances hold our interest through the slow stuff. V.J. Foster plays Vanya as a bristling schlump in high-topped sneakers who slobbers with unfulfilled lust every time his adored Yelena (Anna C. Miller) wafts into the room. Lanky and androgynous in a punk haircut, Sarah Gunnell maintains a resolute deadpan as Sonya, yet manages to convey the intensely feminine longing that is her essence. And, in a marvelously repugnant turn, Tom Fitzpatrick transforms the Professor into a gouty, doddering sensualist who is comically unable to entertain the least interest in anyone but himself.

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* “Uncle Vanya: Scenes From Country Life,” Playwrights’ Arena, 5262 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends March 12. $15. (213) 840-9283. Running time: 3 hours.