Commentary: What’s missing in two starry new productions of Ibsen and Chekhov on Broadway

Broadway found room this spring for classics from two titans of modern drama — Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” and Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.” It’s thrilling that at such an uncertain time in the American theater, artistic ingenuity and producing muscle were lavished on high-profile revivals of these works. Steve Carell is the unexpected draw of “Uncle Vanya” in a new version by playwright Heidi Schreck, directed by Lila Neugebauer at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. The cast of Lincoln Center Theater’s “Uncle Vanya.” “Uncle Vanya,” which was published in 1897 before its premiere two years later at the Moscow Art Theatre, is rarely away from our stages for long. The home of Dr. Stockman, the whistleblowing doctor who becomes a pariah by exposing the medical hazard of the water system feeding the mineral baths crucial to the town’s economy, transforms into an office and then a makeshift town hall with a rowdy pub atmosphere before switching back again to Stockman’s besieged home after he has been unfairly branded “an enemy of the people.” Herzog’s adaptation prunes away the expository overgrowth of Ibsen’s satiric drama.