Thursday, March 11, 2010

Review of Uncle Vanya at Strawdog Theatre


Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called Uncle Vanya by Chekhov. It was at Strawdog. Finding your seats is very easy. People tell you where to sit. I have a seat that has my name on it. I like the seats because they are comfortable. Before the show starts there were some people who I knew, and I talked to them at the intermission. If anyone gets hungry in the middle of the show, wait until the intermission.

Uncle Vanya is an uncle who is drunk. He is kind of mean sometimes. He adores a girl named Sonya. Why, do you ask? Because he loves his niece. Vanya really likes Yelena because he really just follows her around a lot because I think he loves her. I think he likes Astrov, but he doesn’t love him. When Astrov and Yelena kiss, Uncle Vanya drops the roses and is like “I guess that’s the end.” I think it is kind of funny how he says, “that is done, I guess I’d like to go,” and just leaves. There’s a scene where Vanya is insulting the professor and Sonya stops him. Then he says “I’m guilty, I’m guilty, I’m guilty.” I thought that was funny. I was kind of surprised that Uncle Vanya used the gun. I thought he was just going to pull it out and be about to, and someone would stop him. Or that there wasn’t going to be any sound. He didn’t like the professor. Vanya was kind of angry and sometimes kind of funny. I thought that he did a really good job at doing both of those things. Sometimes both at the same time!

I thought that Sonya was really smart because she stops someone from getting more drunk. I think she really liked Astrov. I think he liked her too, but she is sad because he doesn’t come there to see her. He comes to see Yelena. When she was sad I felt sorry for her. I knew she was sad because she was crying. I thought Michaela’s performance was really good.

I thought Astrov was really hilarious. Why, do you ask? Because he was drunk. I don’t know why he was drunk—he had a lot of alcohol. He liked to drink so much that he drank alcohol so much. Kyle was not drunk. He just tried to act drunk—he did a very good job.

Yelena—I thought that she was very nice and very cute. I though that she was nice a lot of the time, but she was angry some of the time. She talked in a very stern language. She was angry because her husband was acting kind of weird in one of the scenes. Sonya, she got along with. Astrov she didn’t get along with—neither with Uncle Vanya. I understand her position—she wants people to do things which she wants them to do. When they don’t, she feels really angry. I think she did a really good job pretending to be angry.

The funniest scene was one where Astrov, he was with Sonya, and she says no more drinking and he asks: “May I? Can I drink it?” and then she says “No!”

It always took place in a house. It reminded me of my grammy and grandpa’s house because it was very fancy like my grammy and grandpa’s house. They had a window and they had flowers on it. You could see through some parts of it. It was supposed to look like Joseph Cornell boxes, and I thought that was cool because usually people don’t have Cornell boxes in their houses. It was a bright and dark play.

The costumes looked a lot like they were from sometime which wasn’t very long ago. I think it took place in New York or in Paris because one of them had a parasol. And one of them had an outfit that looked like it was from Paris. Yelena’s dress was my favorite. It was really fancy. They looked very fancy—all of them.

The music was sometimes very dramatic and sometimes very cheerful. And in one scene there was a boy named Waffles who was singing a song and they were like “Holy Moly. What? Is? Happening?” And that was the end of the play. It was hilarious. It was not sad because the guy Yelena married didn’t die.

People who like to be surprised would like this show. People who have a very good taste for entertainment would like this play. I think younger kids could see it as long as someone reminds them that someone gets out a gun and uses it. I think the age would be 4 and up.


(Photo by Chris Ocken)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hilarious, what a smart little woman!

Unknown said...

Ada-As the guy who did the lights, I'm curious what you mean when you said that it was a "light and dark play"...Glad you liked our play.

Ada & Mom said...

Sometimes bad things were happening and sometimes good things were happening. The lighting told me that is was night or day. And when it was night it was very very very dark. And when it was day it was very light. When it was light on stage sometimes it meant that something surprising was happening.

Tootsie said...

Ada - I enjoyed your review very much. I am the mother of Yelena/Shannon and mother-in-law to Astrov/Kyle. I enjoyed Uncle Vanya so much, I just went to see it a second time and took two friends.

I was really surprised by the gunshot, too! But of course the second time, I was prepared.

I thought Astrov/Kyle was really good and very funny as a drunk. But it is good to know that he isn't a drunk in real life.

I always love costumes and I thought these were beautiful, too. Aly has a lot of sewing to do, didn't she? I did think Yelena's were the prettiest dresses.

I had read this play before I went, with a script that wasn't nearly as funny as this one. So I was really happy to see the humor brought out in this version.

I loved the set, too. It is amazing how different they can make the Strawdog stage look for each play they do. Such imagination!

You are a lucky girl to be in a theater family and get to go to plays and learn so much about this world at your age. I'm trying to remember the first play I took Shannon to. Her grandpa loved the theater and used to take her and her cousins to plays in the area when she was young. She enjoyed being in plays in high school and then college. By that time, we were going to a lot of plays and I used to try and keep a list of every play I'd taken her to see. It is a wonderful experience to see all these stories.

I hope you will keep on writing about the plays you see. When Shannon was young we didn't have these blogs where people can so easily express themselves. It is so great to have these now and so nice that you are participating this way. (Shannon created a little newspaper called Flagpole, but I don't think she ever wrote a play review for it).

I hope to see you at Strawdog some time.

Unknown said...

Ada-Strawdog linked to your awesome blog and received so many cool comments. checkout Strawdog's facebook page and see.