A MERRY APPROACH TO A MELANCHOLY CLASSIC

These days when directors revive a classic, they have to decide whether their approach will be either to modernize the play or mount it as a period piece, true to the spirit of the times in which it was created. Sometimes, as in the case of the The Pearl’s Uncle Vanya, the director chooses to do a little of both. Thus Hal Brooks (The Pearl’s new artistic director) has opted for Jason Simms’ gentle and elegant interior—appropriate for a tasteful landowner—set against a romantic countryside backdrop; and Barbara A. Bell’s costumes evoke the period in which the play was written: 1897. But he uses a translation by the Russian-language scholar Paul Schmidt, who has been lauded for making Chekhov accessible to American audiences. And he encourages a broad style of acting that sometimes makes the play seem more like a sit-com than a Russian classic.