Onkel Wanja

A jacked-up estate car circles the stage like a gigantic clock’s laboriously dragging minute hand. Robert Borgmann suggests lethargy and paralyzing heat through chirping crickets and a suggestive sound carpet. He shows no fear of deceleration, but never risks becoming boring; He takes his time to let things develop – subtly, yet substantially. Peter Kurth plays a grumpy but not embittered Vanya who has resigned himself to living out his blighted life with decency. But then, an attractive woman is put right under his nose, in the form of Elena, the very young wife of a professor. His spirits are revived. And so is his disgust at his life. How the entire fabric of relationships at this Russian country estate comes apart, how sadness turns into depression and inertia into aggression – Borgmann describes it all entirely without sentimentality. And yet his look at Chekov’s characters doesn’t lack empathy. An astonishingly dynamic portrayal of stagnation.

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