{"id":2481681,"date":"2026-06-30T10:21:51","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T10:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2481681"},"modified":"2026-06-30T10:21:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T10:21:51","slug":"apts-uncle-vanya-drowns-existential-despair-in-vodka-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/apts-uncle-vanya-drowns-existential-despair-in-vodka-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"APT\u2019s \u2018Uncle Vanya\u2019 drowns existential despair in vodka | Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Cap Times is an independent newsroom serving Madison and Wisconsin. Sign up for the Food & Culture newsletter<\/a> for exclusive weekly insight.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n

If Yelena Andreyevna Serebryakova lived here and now instead of in rural Russia in the late 19th century, she would be a social media influencer. And she\u2019d be bad at it.<\/p>\n

Yelena, the disaffected young wife who throws the house into chaos in Anton Chekhov\u2019s \u201cUncle Vanya,\u201d has no passions. When her stepdaughter Sonya suggests she could help on the estate, teach kids or care for the sick, Yelena scoffs.<\/p>\n

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From left, Tracie Lane, Maggie Cramer and Marcus Truschinski play unhappy Russians in “Uncle Vanya,” a new adaptation by Nate Burger at American Players Theatre. Takeshi Kata designed the set.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m not qualified to do any of that! Plus none of it interests me,\u201d she sniffs. \u201cYou want me to start handing out literature to peasants?\u201d<\/p>\n

If\u00a0Ken\u2019s job is beach<\/a>, Yelena\u2019s job is beauty. Yelena is pretty and bored, and as Sonya points out, her unhappiness is catching.<\/p>\n

Brenda DeVita, American Players Theatre\u2019s artistic director for over a decade, leads this summer\u2019s production of \u201cUncle Vanya,\u201d where nihilism threatens to win the day. In her director\u2019s notes, DeVita points to the \u201cstagnation and disillusionment\u201d that smothers these 19th-century Russian characters\u2019 \u201cquiet yearning for a better life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sonya\u2019s right. Nobody\u2019s happy on Vanya\u2019s estate.<\/p>\n

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Dr. Astrov (Casey Hoekstra), Waffles (David Daniel) and Vanya (Marcus Truschinski) drink and sing and bemoan their lives in “Uncle Vanya” at American Players Theatre.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Tracie Lane plays Yelena with the melodramatic air of a teenager who can\u2019t even pretend to be interested in anything other than her own inner monologue.<\/p>\n

Yelena\u2019s elderly professor husband (played by Brian Mani with an impressive commitment to unlikability) feels ignored and put out to pasture. He has gout but pretends to be ailed by rheumatism. He\u2019s sure nobody respects him anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t age earn you the right to a little egoism?\u201d he pouts.<\/p>\n

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Yelena (Tracie Lane) wearily comforts her retired professor husband Alexander Serebryakov (Brian Mani) in “Uncle Vanya.” Holly Payne designed the costumes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The country doctor, Mikhail Astrov (Casey Hoekstra, with an electrifying intensity), drinks too much and resents his patients. He would rather be caring for trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of us, forests are dying, rivers are drying up, whole species are disappearing,\u201d he cries.<\/p>\n

Dr. Astrov can\u2019t stand the \u201cdull-edged, uneducated worker bee\u201d types in the country, but he doesn\u2019t fit in with the educated classes either. In this new adaptation of Chekhov\u2019s text by Nate Burger, Astrov calls himself a \u201cweirdo.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Yelena (Tracie Lane) attempts to bond with her stepdaughter, Sonya (Maggie Cramer) in “Uncle Vanya” at American Players Theatre.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Sonya, played with prodigious energy and extra freckles by Maggie Cramer, has been crushing on the doctor for six solid years, searching in his sloppy drunken ramblings for signs of affection he\u2019s definitely not giving her. (Sonya, girl. If he wanted to, he would.)<\/p>\n

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Marcus Truschinski, center, plays the title character in “Uncle Vanya,” staged in a new adaptation by Nate Burger at American Players Theatre. Takeshi Kata designed the set and Dawn Chiang designed the lights.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Joyless, self-sacrificing Vanya (Marcus Truschinski, with sad eyes and a graying beard) also drinks too much. He neglects the estate, ranting instead about his wasted life and declaring his (unrequited) love for Yelena, 20 years his junior. He tries to grab her whenever they\u2019re alone together. It\u2019s awkward.<\/p>\n

At the start of \u201cUncle Vanya,\u201d the arrival of the professor and Yelena has thrown off everyone\u2019s routines \u2014 even the elderly nanny (Karen Janes Woditsch) complains about the timing of dinner.<\/p>\n

Yet new habits quickly develop, which DeVita choreographs in a wordless scene set to music, the cast retracing the same patterns like figures in a cuckoo clock. Rare moments of levity come only in late-night drunken revels, accompanied on guitar by a sad sack peasant nicknamed Waffles (David Daniel).<\/p>\n

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Burger has adapted the translated text with clarity and a sense of humor. I can\u2019t recall ever hearing \u201cyada yada yada\u201d in Chekhov before.<\/p>\n

The world of \u201cVanya\u201d is equally vivid. Costume designer Holly Payne dresses Yelena in lovely things, like an intricate lace top and a long green skirt that seems to reference Vanya\u2019s insistence that she has \u201cmermaid blood.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scenic designer Takeshi Kata\u2019s wood-paneled interior is set off by milk-glass lamps and a mirror that wants to be a metaphor for the people frustrated and stuck. Catch a glimpse of yourself amid this existential suffering and it\u2019s enough to make a person want to seize the day, take a trip, fall in love. I want to do anything but what Sonya and Vanya do, their heads bent, waiting for death.<\/p>\n

\u201cFreedom!\u201d Yelena shouts in a moment of brief resolve. \u201cOpen water!\u201d I\u2019d love to believe it, but sadly, she can\u2019t even influence herself.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n