The question, as you might have already guessed (or perhaps even known – nah, I doubt it), “What is Uncle Vanya’s real name?”

“Uncle Vanya” is one of Anton Chekhov’s most famous plays, along with “The Cherry Orchard”, “Three Sisters” and “The Seagull”. It is now playing at Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre, the first time Shakespeare has put on a Chekhov play. We went to see it Sunday night, something that I was looking forward to. And, as often when your expectations are too high, you come away disappointed.

I have seen each of the four major Chekhov plays, and at least three of them I have seen more than once. These include “Uncle Vanya”. My impression of his theatrical works is that, when you simply read the text, they are fairly dry, but they have a sort of magic that becomes apparent when they are well performed. I have seen “Uncle Vanya” well performed.

Now, I have to start with talking about the current production of “Vanya” by talking about Shakespeare’s Harmon Hall, which seats approximately 750 people. To me, this is a theater that is much too large for a Chekhov play. Now, I am not a professional critic, so I decided to ask a real critic, like Google’s AI (which I assume is an amalgam of critics worldwide), and here is what it told me: “For staging Chekhov’s plays, an intimate, yet flexible, theater space is ideal, allowing for a sense of realism and allowing the audience to feel close to the characters and their everyday lives.” I agree 100%, and I think staging “Vanya” at the Harmon was a mistake.

(Now, on a personal level, I have to say that the mistake was compounded by our seats, which were in the fifth row of the balcony, meaning that we were really a long way from the stage, which was well below us. We seemed to be like on the third or fourth floor, looking down. No, I did not select these seats. These were replacement seats, because it turns out that we will be out of town on the day we were scheduled to see the show.)

But it wasn’t simply the vastness of the theater that created the problem. I think a problem at least as serious was wh”at I believe was simply poor casting. And that the poor casting was compounded by the decision to set the show in a massive, old, estate in rural Russia (which is where Chekhov set it), to make this clear in the opening oral introduction to the show at Shakespeare, in keeping the names of all of Chekhov’s characters, in referring to Russia, Russia, Russia, but in not having the actors play their roles as if they were Russian, much less as if they were in Russia.

Playing Vanya was Hugh Bonneville. Probably everyone but Edie and me know who Bonneville is. He’s best known, I have read, for playing a major role in Downton Abbey, a show that we have never seen. Don’t hold that against us, please. But those who know Bonneville know that he is English. And he played Vanya with a very English accent. No one told him that Vanya was Russian, not English, I guess. And no one told any of the other six or seven cast members that they should play their roles with English accents. The result was that each of the other characters had American accents, and dear Uncle Vanya spoke with a pronounced British accent.

My other problems (and I know I am going to sound like Donald Trump talking about D.E.I., but take it for granted that is not how I am trying to sound) come from the choices for the other cast positions. The story line, if you do not know it, has Vanya’s former brother-in-law and his new, much younger wife, come to live on the family estate, because it has become too expensive to stay in St. Petersburg on a retired professor’s salary. Vanya, and the local physician, Astrov, both fall in love with young (but married) Yelena, and complications result.

Bonneville was all right, I guess. The actor playing Astrov, though, did not seem up to the task. This was not all his fault. The role of Astrov is the role of a man so sexually appealing that women simply fall all over him, although he is, or pretends to be, not interrsted. This Astrov is not a heartthrob, and you wonder why either was attracted to him. Period.

The actress playing Yelena, Ito Aghayere, was born in Canada, and is of a Nigerian ethnicity. Why would anyone cast a Black actress in this role in a Chekhov play? (I told you I would sound like Donald Trump.) Now, I could understand it if you took “Uncle Vanya” and reset it to another location at another time. But this was not the case here. In this production, you are supposed to think that you are watching a very Russian family on their very Russian estate. Ito Aghayere, as attractive as she is, just does not look Russian.

Another Black actor, Craig Wallace, is also in the play as Ilya Ilyich, or Waffles, a retired landowner who also lives on the estate. I had a problem with his casting as well.

So, in this time bound, very traditional Russian estate, we have an English man, a Black man, a Black woman, and three other cast members, who  look to be White Americans.

Now, all of this could have been overlooked if the cast members could overcome their physical differences with fine acting. But this just did not seem to be the case. In fact, in a play where emotional relationships have key roles, none of the actors seemed to have any real connection to the others. It sounded to me more like a first read than a polished play.

(I should say that, with regard to the many plays I have seen with actors playing roles written for different ethnic or racial groups, I have no problem. But for this particular production of this particular play, it seemed to me that it just did not work.)

Now, the surprise ending. Edie and I (she pretty much agreed with me, I think) are the only two people who feel this way. The published reviews for both the production and the acting are glowing.

Can I blame it all on our seats?