Themes: Unrequited Love, Families in Crisis, Family Gatherings
Main Cast: Wallace Shawn, Andre Gregory, Julianne Moore, Larry Pine, Brooke Smith, Phoebe Brand, Lynn Cohen, George Gaynes, Madhur Jaffrey, Jerry Mayer
Release Year: 1994
Country: US
Run Time: 119 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
In the late 1980s, noted theatrical director Andre Gregory assembled a group of friends and actors and began rehearsing a new translation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya by David Mamet, not with any specific performance in mind but as a way of exploring the beauty and precise construction of Chekhov's play. Louis Malle, a friend of Gregory's, became interested in the project and spent two weeks filming Gregory's actors as they performed Uncle Vanya without an audience in a run-down theater near New York's Times Square. In these performances, the line between theater and real life is blurred as conversations between actors -- juggling take-out cups of coffee and wearing street clothes -- slowly grow into a superb performance of Chekhov's classic, with Wallace Shawn as Vanya, Julianne Moore as Yelena, Brooke Smith as Sonya, and Larry Pine as Dr. Astrov. With a certain sad irony, this marvelously realized adaptation of a play about people wondering what they've done with their lives proved to be Louis Malle's final film; he died of cancer in 1995. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
A clever and powerful interpretation of the Anton Chekhov play Uncle Vanya, Vanya on 42nd Street reunites director Louis Malle with Wallace Shawn and André Gregory, his collaborators from 1981's My Dinner With André. Like that film, Vanya is a self-reflexive examination of the thin line between an actor's performances and his or her own life; the success of both films relies on Malle's ability to convincingly blur that distinction. Essentially a filmed rehearsal, Vanya's spare production design -- no costumes, no set, just an empty, rundown theater -- gives it tremendous resonance. Without a uniformly excellent cast, the film might have come off as merely conceptual; thankfully, Malle is aided by Shawn, surprisingly effective in the play's (and the film's) title role, and the emotive Julianne Moore as Yelena. Brooke Smith's heartbreaking performance as the ignored Sonya, however, really steals the film. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
Alysse Bezahler - Associate Producer, Gary Jones - Costume Designer, Gary Marcus - First Assistant Director, Louis Malle - Director, Nancy Baker - Editor, Joshua Redman - Composer (Music Score), Sharon Ilson - Makeup, Eugene Lee - Production Designer, Declan Quinn - Cinematographer, Fred Berner - Producer, Tod A. Maitland - Sound/Sound Designer, Andre Gregory - Screenwriter, David Mamet - Screenwriter, Anton Chekhov - Play Author
Over the course of three years, director Andre Gregory and a group of actors came together on a voluntary basis in order to better understand Chekhov's work through performance workshops. Staged and filmed entirely within the vacant shell of the then-abandoned Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street in New York City, they enacted the play rehearsal style on a bare stage with the actors in street clothes. Free from any commercial demands, their performances were for an invited audience only. Gregory and Malle decided to document the play as they had developed it. The film was the result of the collaborative process.
Location
Workshop rehearsals with Gregory and the cast originally took place at the abandoned Victory Theatre on 42nd Street in New York City. The filmed version was shot entirely within the New Amsterdam Theatre, also on 42nd Street. Built in 1903, the theatre was the original home of the Ziegfeld Follies, a historical tidbit mentioned in the film during some pre-show banter. In the late 1930s, the New Amersterdam Theatre was transformed into a movie palace. The theatre remained a movie palace until "temporarily" closed in 1982.
At the time Vanya on 42nd Street was filmed, the theatre had been abandoned for over ten years and was in a state of severe disrepair. Rats had chewed through much of the stage rigging, thus making the stage unusable. For the film production, some rows of seats were removed and a small platform was built for the cast and film crew. Shortly after the production of Vanya, the New Amsterdam was leased to The Walt Disney Company. Disney restored the theatre to its grand original design and reopened it in 1997.
Cast and Crew
Shawn, Gregory, and Malle had previously collaboratorated on the 1981 film My Dinner with Andre.
The film would be the last of Malle's career.
Julianne Moore, whose film career had recently been gaining notice from a critically acclaimed role in Short Cuts, was the actor predominantly featured in the advertising campaign for the film. The campaign didn't highlight the ensemble nature of the production, which led some confused movie-goers to think the film was about a woman named Vanya.
