Trailer
Plot summary
Actors meet in New York City to work through Uncle Vanya in a theater on 42nd Street that stands empty and in disrepair. The play runs act by act on a bare stage, with brief breaks to move props or to take refreshments. The actors wear street clothes, and there are no props or scenery. Their stage is unusable, damaged by flooding and mice, so the company works from a part of the old orchestra section, with seats cleared away and a platform put up. Vanya, Yelena, Sonya and Dr. Astrov are among the parts they take up. The company has met over three years in voluntary workshops to explore the play, and performs for invited audiences only.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Andre Gregory and a group of actors met voluntarily over three years of workshops to better understand Chekhov's work, performing the play rehearsal-style on a bare stage in street clothes inside the vacant, abandoned New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street, for invited audiences only.
- The New Amsterdam Theatre had been abandoned for over ten years and was in severe disrepair when the film was shot: rats had chewed through much of the stage rigging, and flooding and mice made the stage unusable, restricting the cast to a section of what had been the orchestra.
- The New Amsterdam Theatre, where Vanya on 42nd Street was shot, was built in 1903 as the original home of the Ziegfeld Follies, was turned into a movie palace in the late 1930s, and remained one until it closed in 1982.
- Shortly after Vanya on 42nd Street was made, the abandoned New Amsterdam Theatre was leased to The Walt Disney Company, which restored it to its grand original design and reopened it in 1997.
