As unclassifiable as his other masterpieces—The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull and Three Sisters—Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya moves freely between laughter and tears, between comedy and tragedy. 

 

Uncle Vanya revolves around the middle-aged title character, a mediocrity who has been forgotten by everybody and who has pretty much nothing to show for his nearly half-century of life except the avid devotion of his plain niece Sonia, herself the doormat daughter of elderly professor Alexander, now married to the beautiful—and much younger—Yelena. Vanya unabashedly adores the lively Yelena, but she only, often teasingly, considers him a friend. Then there’s Astrov, the dashing country doctor, who frequents Alexander’s estate that Vanya and Sofya sweat blood and tears to keep profitable; he might be able to pry Yelena away from her suffocating marriage. 

 

The above paragraph makes Chekhov’s plot sound like a mere soap opera, but there’s so much variety and vitality in his exquisitely-written characters—including making Astrov one of the first real environmentalists to grace the stage—that melodrama is kept permanently at bay. Because of its enormous subtlety, Uncle Vanya rarely makes it to the stage convincingly: the last time I saw it in New York, in Austin Pendleton’s 2009 off-Broadway production, it flickered to life only occasionally; and while Lila Neugebauer’s new staging at Lincoln Center Theater has its effective moments, it too ultimately misses the mark. 

 

One problem is that Chekhov’s tightrope walk between the tragic and the comic is best conveyed on a small stage so that the audience is close to and invested in these flawed, all-too-human characters. But the Vivian Beaumont’s thrust stage hampers Neugebauer and set designer Mimi Lien, who populate the set with pieces of furniture, tables and chairs strewn about, while a huge projection of a forest takes encompasses the back wall. Although much of the action is up front, some scenes are played out further back, lessening their impact. There are bits of visual beauty thanks to Neugebauer and her crack design team—in addition to Lien, there are lighting designers Lap Chi Chu and Elizabeth Harper as well as costumer Kaye Voyce—but even something as clever as a rainstorm drenching star Steve Carell just lays the metaphorical misery on a bit too thickly.

 

Heidi Shreck’s adaptation updates the play by adding a few unnecessary F-bombs and stripping it of its essential Russianness, which for the most part doesn’t hamper it very much but neither does it make it more relatable or, God help us, modern. Neugebauer’s cast follows suit, a mixed bag of acting styles that has a couple gems amid more unfocused portrayals.

 

Anika Noni Rose’s vivacious Yelena has a boisterousness that can’t entirely hide her tearful countenance, while Alfred Molina is having so much fun as the cranky, lively old Alexander that it’s contagious. Conversely—and surprisingly—William Jackson Harper makes Astrov a weirdly jumpy bunch of nerves, his dialogue coming out in torrents that are at odds with what Chekhov has written, making it difficult to see what draws Yelena to him. 

 

Carell’s Vanya, while too subdued—Carell sometimes fades too easily into the background, too obviously underlining Vanya’s wasted life—uses the actor’s hangdog looks to visualize such a weary soul. By far the best performance comes from Alison Pill, whose Sonia is wonderfully alive and piercingly plain; she speaks the final heartbreaking but hopeful speech without a trace of affectation. 

 

But even that final silence between Pill and Carell can’t rescue this intermittently touching Uncle Vanya; Chekhov’s illuminating portrait of people trudging on with life despite their despair once again deserves better.