John Benjamin Hickey and Hugh Bonneville Photo by Kevin Berne

And so it is here: this Vanya is staggeringly brilliant. McPherson's adaptation (aided by Godwin's detail-oriented direction) runs like a maglev train at top speed, so smoothly does it glide across its landscape, rocketing toward its destination with nary a wobble. With a cast of stunningly talented actors giving heartfelt, funny, touching, intimate portraits of Chekhov's beautifully defined (if morally and psychically wounded) characters, against a marvelously conceived stage design by Robert Brill, and you have a recipe for a night of theatre that will entertain, enlighten, and perhaps even make you reexamine your own hopes and desires.

Uncle Vanya takes place on the country estate run by Iván Voinítsky (Vanya for short, played by Hugh Bonneville, famed for his role in "Downton Abbey") and his niece Sonya (Melanie Field). The estate has been funding the work of Professor Aleksándr Serébryakov (Tom Nelis), who was once married to Vanya's sister, Sonya's mother, but has recently remarried the beautiful young Yelena (Ito Aghayere) and brought her back to the estate with plans he keeps to himself–and which I will keep from you in case you have never seen the play.

As the play opens, it's a lovely day in June, and Vanya and Sonya relax in the company of local doctor Mikhaíl Ástrov (John Benjamin Hickey), Marína Timofevna, aka Nana (Nancy Robinette), long-time nanny/nursemaid to the family, Maríya Voinítsky (Sharon Lockwood), Vanya's mother and Sonya's "Grandmaman," and Ílya Ílyich Telégin (Craig Wallace), aka Waffles, due to his acne scars.

Vanya appears at first to be little more than a bored slacker who fumbles about looking slovenly in his grungy farm jacket, worn trousers, and sweat-stained undershirt, waiting for an opportunity to get into his cups with fellow drinker, Doctor Astrov. For his part, Astrov complains of receiving knocks in the middle of the night requiring him to go attend to one unfortunate soul after another, and on other nights lying sleepless, feeling "dread at the knock that never comes." Both men express almost terminal boredom, with the doctor wondering "why can't it be 100, 200 years from now," and Vanya bemoaning that "Everything's the same as ever... just worse." He has, he says, "wasted his whole life. For what?"

Vanya and the doctor are both besotted by the beautiful Yelena. The Doctor does some not so subtle wooing of Yelena by showing her the maps he's drawn of the area around the estate, documenting the loss of animal life as the forests that supported it are cut down for wood for fuel and housing. For both men, the world is falling apart around them, yet neither has done much to repair it. In sort of an opposite of the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, or "repairing the world," they seem content to let it fall apart around them and drink in order to assuage their guilt over their hopelessness and inaction.

Keeping things going seems to fall to Chekhov's women. While the men drink and bluster, it is Sonya and Nana and Grandmaman–and even Yelena–who do the hard work of keeping the estate going and peace kept in the house. At least as much peace as they can manage to negotiate with men who are bellicose, belligerent, opinionated, and driven by passions they can't seem to control.

The cast are, to a person, superb. They seem to inhabit Chekhov's characters as if they were born into them. As Sonya, Melanie Field can break your heart with her deep eyes that manage to express the stultifying nature of her existence as a "plain" woman: "What a terrible thing it is to not be beautiful," she states at one point. Aghayere's Yelena carries herself with a sense of privilege and grace, but when she finds herself in a compromising situation with the doctor, her face transforms from a look of soft refusal, and then surrender, that speaks volumes about her relationship to her much older husband. It's as though we could see the war raging in her head, a battle she is powerless to prevent.

Hugh Bonneville, thanks to his years-long run on a very popular TV series, is clearly the star here, as well as the main box office attraction. But if you are expecting anything like his portrayal of Lord Crawley, 7th Earl of Grantham, you will be pleasantly surprised to discover how well-rounded an actor he is. For his Vanya is filled with brilliant physicality (and a hilarious first reveal on stage!), and an incredibly powerful emotive quality. His tipsy Vanya is absolute perfection, always threatening to cross a line into a parody of drunkenness, but never quite breaching that border. His raging is both terrifying and hysterically funny.

Nancy Robinette's Nana is appropriately matronly and gentle, the kind of woman who can erase the pain of a skinned knee or a failed love affair simply by enclosing you in her arms. Tom Nelis's portrayal of the professor is wonderfully pompous: ramrod straight (except when he's complaining of his recurring leg pains), impeccably groomed, yet hilariously vulnerable in the play's famous penultimate scene. But my favorite performance may have come from John Benjamin Hickey as Doctor Astrov. Astrov is committed to his cause, yet resigned to its futility, and this dichotomy seems to suffuse his every movement. He's a keen observer of the chaos around him; though seemingly horrified by it, he can't keep himself from returning over and over again to watch it play out, and Hickey's expressions let us know he fears that chaos and hopelessness is a fate his character shares.

My advice? Do yourself a favor and experience how a classic work of theatrical art can touch your heart in ways you never imagined. This Uncle Vanya, despite its themes of hopelessness and injustice, will somehow leave you feeling more hopeful than ever about the theatre and life.

Uncle Vanya runs through March 23, 2025, at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Peet's Theatre, 2025 Addison Street, Berkeley CA. Shows are Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m., Wednesdays at 7:00pm, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Saturdays at 2:00 p.m. Tickets are $25-$134, with discounts available for those under 35. For tickets and information, please visit www.berkeleyrep.org, or call the box office at 510-647-2949.