Vanya on 42nd Street **** (1994, Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore, Jerry Mayer, Phoebe Brand, George Gaynes) – Classic Movie Review 11,267

Director Louis Malle’s 1994 American film Vanya on 42nd Street, written by Andre Gregory and starring Wallace Shawn and Julianne Moore, is an intimate, interpretive performance of the 1899 play Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov as adapted by David Mamet.

Stage director Andre Gregory and his group of New York stage actors had come together on a voluntary basis to understand Chekhov’s work through performance workshops over a period of three years at the abandoned Victory Theater on 42nd Street, and their performances were for an invited audience only. Gregory and Malle decided to document the play as they had developed it.

The film is staged and filmed entirely within the vacant shell of another dilapidated theatre, the then-abandoned New Amsterdam Theatre, on 42nd Street in New York City. The actors in street clothes enact the play rehearsal style on a bare stage in a collaborative work that proved Malle’s final film.

The music is by the Joshua Redman Quartet, with Redman on tenor saxophone, Brad Mehldau on piano, Christian McBride on bass, and Brian Blade on drums.

The dilapidated New Amsterdam theatre in 1985 before the renovation of 42nd Street.

The theatre had been abandoned for more than ten years and was in severe disrepair. Rats had chewed through much of the stage rigging, while flooding and mice had made the stage unusable, so some rows of seats were removed and a small platform was built for the cast and film crew.

The New Amsterdam was then leased to The Walt Disney Company, who restored it to its grand original design and reopened it in 1997.

The cast are Wallace Shawn as Vanya, Julianne Moore as Yelena, Larry Pine as Astrov, Brooke Smith as Sonya, George Gaynes as Serybryakov, Phoebe Brand as Marina, Jerry Mayer as Telegin and Lynn Cohen as Vonenskaya, with Madhur Jaffrey and Andre Gregory as himself.

Rising star Moore, a hit in Short Cuts, was featured prominently in the advertising.

Shawn, Gregory and Malle previously collaborated on the 1981 My Dinner with Andre.

Malle married Candice Bergen in 1980. He died from lymphoma, aged 63, at their home in Beverly Hills on 23 November 1995.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,267

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