Andre Gregory's direction of Uncle Vanya is so wonderful, but when it was decided to film the production, why did they add those stupid interludes before the play and between acts?
Most of what is wonderful in the film is Gregory's direction of the play. Most of what was added for the film is embarrassing.
I think it was the film's way of "recovering" the play from masterpiece theater mode and making it and its characters seem more immediate and sympathetic. The rehearsal style staging, modern clothes, and gritty Manhattan locale were also means of achieving a sense of immediacy.
shareAgreed. I completely disagree with the OP and think these touches were brilliant.
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Hi fans,
I just wanted to let you know that the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square in London is currently hosting a Wallace Shawn season. This includes performances of three of his plays; The Fever, Grasses of a Thousand Colours and Aunt Dan and Lemon.
On top of this two of his all time greatest films will be screened later this month:
My Dinner with Andre
Saturday 18th April, 4pm
Vanya on 42nd street
Saturday 25th April, 4pm
Tickets for the film screenings are £7.50 or £6.50 if concessions
For further information and to book your tickets please visit:
www.royalcourttheatre.com
This is a very exciting opportunity people!!!!
Please let me know if you are interested in coming and just generally what you think!!!
It says Louis Malle is the director ... as in "Dinner With Andre" too, I believe.
Not familiar with intermission, entr'acte, intermezzio....etc?
The content of the interludes mirrored the content of the play.
The actors streamed their characters.
For example, Wallace Shawn (Vanya) is first seen eating, and his initial dialogue - as himself - is a complaint about lack of sleep. He after he enters the New Amsterdam Theatre, he finds a bench on stage, flops down, and falls asleep. When he awakes, he awakes up in character, dishevelled, and sits up and straightens his clothes.
In the play, Vanya's first appearance occurs after he wakes up. Chekhov's stage note informs us Vanya was sleeping, woke up, walked into the garden looking dishevelled from sleep, sat on a bench, and straightened his collar.
Another example, when the actors first arrive and mingle at the Theatre, the conversation between Phoebe Brand (Nanny) and Larry Pine (Astrov) mirror the conversation between the Nanny and Astrov that open the play,
The relationships between the actors are projections of the relationships between the characters, and the relationships are not only witnessed during the three interludes, but in the play itself: Larry Pine kissing Wallace Shawn's bald spot (not in the written play), and Vanya and Elena kissing and hugging as familiar and good friends (not in the play).
Also, there was no interlude between Acts 3 and 4 because Gregory did not want to break up the tension at that point in the performance. The first interlude, pre-Act 1, was the streamlining together of New York reality with the spatial architecture of the New Amsterdam Theatre with the group of people preparing to act. The second interlude, after Act 1, was a reminder that we were watching a rehearsal, and it allowed Malle to change his camera framing/technical set-up. The third interlude, after Act 2, was to give the actors a chance to mentally get ready for the final two acts, to allow viewers to mentally catalogue all the overlapping Russian and New York and Cinematic and Theatrical elements of the performance we had just witnessed, and to once again allow Malle to switch and adjust his technical set-up (which, incidentally, paralleled the emotional progression of the play....).
"Nothing" was added to the play.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this film was the binary nature of the entire project at the micro and macro levels; the binary element that fascinated me the most was how Reality (what you feel was added to the play: Reality, whatever happened in Real Time that was not part of the play) occupied the interstices: the illusion of the play blended with reality so well that I stopped thinking of the play as an illusion, as something not real, but as reality, as a group of people trying to recreate the written word as faithfully and realistically as possible. Not a play, but real people being real people.
Duly note that in the written play, there are things seemingly unconnected with the play that haunt the margins. For example, there is a watchman in the far background of the garden who sounds his rattle, he also whistles, and there is a thunderstorm (natural element and symbolic element; in New York, the faint sound of a police siren is a natural and symbolic element, and Joshua Redman's lyrical jazz theme echoes the play's melancholia.
why did they add those stupid interludes before the play and between acts?