CHEKHOV, REIMAGINED
IN BEAUTIFUL CHAOS

Dmitry Krymov turns a classic
into a surreal theatrical hallucination

There are many ways to stage Anton Chekhov. You can do it the traditional way with period furniture, carpets, painted trees, or take a turn toward symbolism, expressionism, even full-on tragicomedy. But Uncle Vanya, Scenes from Country Life at La MaMa Experimental Theatre goes in a completely different direction: it plays like a vaudevillian art installation that somehow crashed a Chekhovian rehearsal and started jamming.

Guiding the piece is writer and director Dmitry Krymov, an internationally acclaimed, multi-awarded artist who stages classic works as vivid theatrical hallucinations, shifting between humor, weirdness, and moments of disarming emotional clarity. After publicly opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the government shut down many of his productions in Moscow; undeterred, he built a new artistic home here, where audiences can experience his unique vision while it’s still safe to do so.

Presented at the Ellen Stewart Theatre in association with Krymov Lab NYC, this Uncle Vanya is filtered through puppetry, music, design, and physical theater. The basic Chekhovian DNA is still there: it’s a story about frustration, squandered potential, and the tragedy of people who realize they have wasted much of their lives. Vanya and his niece Sonya have spent years supporting the pompous Professor Serebryakov and his country estate, and the second his attractive young wife Yelena arrives from the city, all emotional decorum goes out the window.

A small sign made of scrap wood wheels onto the large white stage with the words “Empty stage.” It disappears, only to reemerge with “Summer,” then “Countryside.” The simplicity and oddball charm catch the audience by surprise, prompting the first laughter and setting the pace. Then Shelby Flannery appears as Yelena, clad in a late 19th-century black frock coat with a tailored bodice, skirt, elaborate picture-hat, white gloves, and a folded parasol, the picture of pure elegance.

She tries to change into her modern summer dress but never gets the chance, spending the rest of the show half-naked in a camisole, corset, ruffled drawers, and a single thigh-high white lace stocking. The rest of the cast perches behind her, ready to swoop in with complaints, confessions, and general chaos. Flannery delivers a perfect cocktail of “I care,” “I’m baffled,” and “someone save me,” and unlike the original Yelena, she looks almost terrified of being the center of attention, with dead flies spilling from her hair for that extra touch of absurdity and symbolism.

While she is mid-outfit swap, doctor Astrov (Javier Molina) shows up drunk and gives her a literally touchy speech about the long-term destruction of the planet while she almost reaches an orgasm. He is the opposite of her husband, Professor Serebryakov (Colin Buckingham), a walking ego who reads her his old essays about art, boring everybody to death. Buckingham adds a dash of romantic flair, convincing us for a minute his character loves his wife more than he loves himself.

Zach Fike Hodges is Vanya, the bitter, exhausted brother-in-law and estate manager who realizes too late that he has wasted his life supporting the professor. Even his mother (Anya Zicer) is a devoted admirer of Serebryakov, blind to the damage he causes to her son. And it surely doesn’t help that Vanya is now in love with the professor’s wife, insisting the play revolves around his pain. At the same time, endlessly polite Telegin (Amen Igbinosun) keeps calling out his own name, highlighting that he is the only one who remembers he exists.

The last “victim” is Sonya (Natalie Battistone), Vanya’s hardworking niece, who loves deeply and gets absolutely nothing she wants. Tim Eliot rounds out the cast of the original Chekhovian characters as the Nanny, a cynical masculine nurse with a babushka-style headscarf, but two unexpected characters come to be a big part of the play from beginning to end: a hen and a rooster. Sure, there are no chickens in Uncle Vanya; leave it to Krymov to make you wonder if there should be, because they cast the entire story in a surprising new light.

MaryKate Glenn is a large white Hen and Sasha Drey is the black Rooster. She comes in at the beginning to greet Yelena, holding an adorable baby chick; she puts it on the floor and it starts running around. Peel off the oversized chicken head and the Hen is just a weary woman in a black slip, pink bunny slippers, and smeared makeup, chain-smoking while complaining that the rooster is utterly useless. Compared to her life, the humans’ lives seem meaningless: a hawk killed 11 of her children and she only has one left. It’s tragic, and Glenn is touching when she retells the horror, but the professor wants chicken soup, the vegetarian doctor is starving, the Nanny has no empathy, and the baby chick… well, it doesn’t end well. Pain doesn’t scale neatly; one person’s paper cut is another’s personal apocalypse.

Scenic design by Emona Stoykova, and projections by Yana Biryukova, lean heavily into a graphic, expressionistic aesthetic; the white floor extends to the rear of the theater, and a large white drop with a black sketch of a rural landscape maintains the visual abstraction. Krista Smith’s lighting keeps shadows at bay, letting Luna Gomberg’s imaginative costumes shine as a witty bridge between past and present. Leah Ogawa’s puppets steal scenes in the best possible way, and Denis Zabikaya’s sound design rounds out the sensory feast.

Anyone hoping for a polished Anton Chekhov revival might leave pleasantly confused. Chekhov’s whole deal is people stuck in lives they didn’t sign up for, watching everything change while they hesitate over what to do next, so theatrical weirdness works. If that feels like an absurd way to handle a 19th-century Russian play, it’s probably closer to Chekhov’s sense of humor than you think.

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photos by Marina Levitskaya

Uncle Vanya, scenes from country life
Krymov Lab NYC
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
Ellen Stewart Theatre, 66 E. 4th Street, New York
performance schedule varies; see website for details
ends on April 12, 2026
for tickets ($30–$60), call 212.475.7710 or visit La MaMa

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