They loiter around a catering table and introduce themselves.
Rehearsals begin tomorrow and the play opens in April.
They are not characters in a play.
STAGE HANDSThe cast, from far left: Mia Katigbak, Alison Pill, Anika Noni Rose, Alfred Molina, Jonathan Hadary, William Jackson Harper, Jayne Houdyshell, and Steve Carell.Fashion Editor: Edward Bowleg III.
Carell concurs: Theyre just so specifically drawn that they feel absolutely real and lived-in.
He pauses, gathering his thoughts on the playwright.
I mean, the guywasa genius.
We have complicated feelings about each of them.
(I could have been a Schopenhauer, he howls, a Dostoevsky.)
Says Carell: Hes created this world of illusion for himself to get by.
And then when he actually cant even create the illusion, its heartbreaking.
Even though, from the outside, acceptance and resignation may look very alike.
She and Andre Bishop, the organizations producing artistic director, discovered a shared love of Chekhov.
(He died in 1904 at 44, after years of chronic illness from tuberculosis.
)Vanya,however, is the one that has recently percolated through the culture.
The 2021 Japanese filmDrive My Carfollows a widowed theater actor and director as he stagesUncle Vanyain Hiroshima.
Another well-regardedVanya, starring David Cromer, was staged last year in a Manhattan loft.
The setting, too, is near-future America, and the play does feel unnervingly timely.
Weve been trying to figure out: Where do we go now?
How do we pick everything back up?
We thought he should be honestly funny, she says.
But always with the best actors, there is also a glimpse of a wound.
Neugebauer agrees: Ive always felt that his comedy actually comes from a deep well of sadness.
Bitter, sarcastic, cynical, defensive, lazy, self-mocking, and self-protective.
Vanya makes shabby little excuses for all his failures.
It is impossible for him to be happy.
But hes also deeply intelligent, funny, sweet, courageous, and, ultimately, heroic.
I think, at his core, he is a very decent person, Carell says.
A very kind person.
He was inspired and full of life, full of thought and passion.
In a state of despair, Vanya asks Astrov how he can start over.
Astrov replies in Schrecks script.
No new life is coming, not for us.
The cast has been called for the photo.
They crowd into an elevator and ascend to the bright theater lobby.
A member of the production crew announces, Last looks!
and everyone is suddenly very still.
Its possible no one is actually breathing.
Molina asks, genially, Do you want us to give you any kind of mood?
Are we all SeriousVanya?
Or are they FunnyVanya?
The answer could go either way.Uncle Vanya,of course, is both.
Hair, Lacy Redway; makeup, Fulvia Farolfi.
