Strong performances in a slightly wonky production: Uncle Vanya reviewed

Uncle Vanya opens with a puzzle. Is the action set in the early 20th century or right now? The furnishings might be modern purchases or inherited antiques, and the costumes are also styled ambiguously. It soon becomes clear from Conor McPherson’s script, which uses colloquialisms like ‘wanging on’, that this is a contemporary version. It’s always a risk to update Chekhov and the director Ian Rickson pulls it off. Never once did I wonder why these chattering idlers didn’t have broadband or mobile phones.

But the casting is awry. Vanya is a middle-aged Hamlet, a thinker, an observer, whose dreams are smashed to pieces in the course of the action. And because he sees himself as a thwarted romantic and a failed intellectual he needs to suggest some traces of philosophical power and sexual competence. Toby Jones plays him as a crumpled grouch, an articulate but irascible back-biter who hangs around the kitchen table making sarky comments about his shambolic relatives. Who is this sad, lonely prattler? Perhaps a disappointed florist who once reached the semi-finals of Mastermind. Jones is a superb light comedian but he lacks Vanya’s physical swagger and spiritual grace.

Between him and Yelena there isn’t a hint of tension or chemistry. They actually seem quite matey but that’s not right. Sexual frustration is the play’s dominant theme. The entire house ought to pulse and crackle with Vanya’s agonised longings and with Yelena’s monstrous indolence, her titanic uselessness.

The other doomed romance, between Astrov and Sonya, is equally hard to credit because both are dashingly attractive. Why doesn’t the lonely Astrov respond to Sonya’s blatant invitations to kiss her? Is he gay? Sonya is played by the youngest and prettiest member of the cast, Aimee Lou Wood, who has to deliver the line, ‘I’m so ugly.’