The Guardian - 01.08.2019

Section:GDN 1N PaGe:13 Edition Date:190801 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 31/7/2019 19:15 cYanmaGentaYellowb

Thursday 1 August 2019 The Guardian •

National^13

Theatre review Chekhovian despair

lifted by Everett’s comedic touch

Arifa Akbar

L

ast year Rupert Everett

gave a heart-wrenching

performance in The

Happy Prince , a fi lm

about the elderly Oscar

Wilde in which he played

the writer not as a predictably witty

dandy but a tragic fi gure stuttering

towards the end of his life.

Here, in his directorial stage

debut, Everett approaches

Uncle Vanya with a similarly

counterintuitive touch. Chekhov

wrote the play as a comedy, Everett

told the Guardian recently , and while

his production is not the fi rst to draw

out the absurdist elements of this

fi n-de-siècle masterpiece about mid-

life malaise, fewer have gone as far

as this daringly jaunty production,

adapted by David Hare.

Much of the comedy is delivered

by Everett himself, who gives a

fl amboyant performance as a louche,

growly Vanya, wandering around

barefoot and eking out pained

humour from lines as lugubrious as:

“It’s a perfect day to hang yourself.”

Not all, however, attest to the

play’s outright success as a comedy.

Richard Roxburgh , who played

Vanya opposite Cate Blanchett in

the Sydney Theatre Company’s

acclaimed 2012 production, likened

it to a Noël Coward play without

the jokes, and it feels occasionally

thus in this production. Some actors

play’s emotional turbulence, is

played with elegant restraint by

Poésy but her relationship to the

professor is neglected. Light is

a lik able misanthrope as Astrov,

and we feel his despair as a medic

with disease and death rising in

the peasant population around

him. But his interest in trees and

reforestation as an alternative way to

save humanity is turned rather too

heavy handedly into a climate-c risis

message in Hare’s script.

By the second half the comedy

begins to glitter and gleam against

Chekhovian darkness. The pressure-

cooker blend of disappointment and

simmering anger builds to boiling

point as the cast languishes in the

Russian countryside, barricaded by

their bourgeois privilege against the

poverty surround them.

The scene of Astrov’s stolen kiss

with Yelena, when it comes, is a

powerful one, set against Vanya’s

own fast-wilting romantic hopes.

Tragedy and comedy fi nd a perfect

meeting point in his murderous

attempts on the professor’s life.

U ntil 3 August

Stream, tweet,

cloud and web:

how hi-tech

hijacked the

wild outdoors

Patrick Barkham

Tweet, web, stream and cloud may

once have evoked the wild outdoors,

but they are now predominantly used

to describe technology, according to

linguistic research.

A study of datasets of informal

conversations from diff erent decades

has found that the implied meaning of

some common nature words in Britain

has almost completely changed in a

single generation.

The meaning of “tweet” has

changed most. All mentions in the

1990s referred to birdsong, against

just one in 100 in the 2010s , with all

other mentions now referring to social

media posts.

In the 1990s, seven in 10 mentions

of “web” referred to a spider’s web,

but in the 2010s more than nine in

10 meant the internet. All mentions

of “streams” in the 1990s referred to

fl owing water, but only 36% did so in

the 2010s. Branch, net, fi bre, fi eld and

cloud have also seen their meanings

become predominantly commercial

or technological.

Dr Robbie Love , a linguistics fel-

low at the University of Leeds who

conducted the study for the National

Trust, said: “Language represents

what’s important to a culture or soci-

ety. Nature language being replaced or

used less frequently suggests nature

potentially becoming less important or

being replaced by other things.”

Other words to have decreased in

relative frequency between the 1990s

and the 2010s included lawn, picnic,

snow, jungle, pond, mountain, soil,

rock, bird, garden and shell.

The study also used cross-genera-

tional survey data from YouGov to fi nd

that one in four parents and grandpar-

ents felt worried about their children

losing natural meanings from lan-

guage. Popular suggestions for helping

children learn the language of nature

included increasing outdoor play

(74%), outdoor lessons (56%), teach-

ing nature at school (54%), and nature

language being taught like modern lan-

guages in schools (30%).

Andy Beer, a regional director of the

National Trust , said: “Nature connec-

tion isn’t just about playing outside. It

means using all the senses – actively

noticing nature, such as the way gorse

growing wild by the coast can smell

like coconut, how fog in the autumn

can cling to your hair, how a spider web

can sparkle on a dewy morning, and

enjoying the eye-catching popping of

colours of wildfl owers that grow in the

cracks in the pavements and waste

ground during the summer.”

Uncle Vanya

Theatre Royal, Bath

★★★★☆

• particularly John Light as the
  defeated Dr Astrov and Clémence
  Poésy as Yelena , the beautiful, bored
  wife of the elderly professor – seem
  to be playing it straight, which grates
  against the comic elements.
  But the tonal inconsistencies are
  ironed out so that the depression
  and despair is balanced against the
  bursts of farce and bathos. Katherine
  Parkinson steers brilliantly
  between humour and torment as
  Vanya’s plain niece, Sonya , and is
  winningly dorky around Astrov,
  for whom she harbours a passion.
  Her shift to pathos, when her love
  is not returned, is done with pitch
  perfection. Meanwhile, the small
  part of the nursemaid, Marina , is
  made big with characterful humour
  in Ann Mitchell’s hands.
  Not everything works seamlessly:
  Yelena, who sparks much of the

▼ Rupert Everett as a louche and

growly Vanya with Katherine

Parkinson as his lovelorn niece Sonya

PHOTOGRAPH: NOBBY CLARK

1%

Proportion of mentions of the word

‘tweet’ in the 2010s that meant

birdsong. It was 100% in the 1990s

Cambridge student dies after

fall from plane in Madagascar

Mattha Busby

A “bright, independent” student has

died in Madagascar after falling from

a plane. Alana Cutland’s family said

they had been left “heartbroken” and

paid tribute to the Cambridge Univer-

sity student.

The 19-year-old from Milton Keynes

died while on an internship in the

African island earlier this month, the

Foreign Offi ce said.

In a statement, her family described

her as a talented dancer who had a

“thirst for discovering more of the

world”. “Our daughter Alana was a

bright, independent young woman,

who was loved and admired by all

those that knew her,” they said.

“She was always so kind and sup-

portive to her family and friends,

which resulted in her having a very

special connection with a wide net-

work of people from all walks of her

life, who we know will miss her dearly.

“Alana grasped every opportunity

that was off ered to her with enthusi-

asm and a sense of adventure ... She

was particularly excited to be embark-

ing on the next stage of her education,

on an internship in Madagascar com-

pl ementing her studies in natural

sciences.”

The statement continued: “We

are heartbroken at the loss of our

wonderful, beautiful daughter, who

lit up every room she walked into .”

Dr David Woodman, from Rob-

inson College, Cambridge , issued a

statement extending condolences.

“Robinson College is deeply shocked

by the news of Alana’s death,” he said.

“In her two years here, she made a

huge contribution to many diff erent

aspects of life in the college. She will

be sorely missed by us all.”

▲ Alana Cutland, 19, had been doing

an internship on the African island

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