VANYA ON 42ND STREET (Directed by Louis Malle. Starring Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore, Brooke Smith, George Gaynes)

How on earth did a 19th century Russian playwright become the next big thing? Vanya On 42nd Street is only the first of three versions of Anton Chekov’s typically melancholic but emotionally charged play Uncle Vanya. Later this year we will be treated to versions set on a Australian sheep farm and in the Welsh hillside, but they will have to go some way to improve on this economical retelling in an abandoned New York building.

Louis Malle once made a feature film that rested entirely on a conversation between theatrical director Andre Gregory and actor/playwright Wallace Shawn, My Dinner With André, and manages the same something-out-of-nothing miracle as he records a kind of undress rehearsal of Gregory directing Shawn in David Mamet’s contemporary flavoured adaptation of Chekov’s weighty drama of disillusionment. The film pulls itself sneakily together as the actors shift from their real selves, babbling on about their smoking habits and other trivia, into character, and the play simply unfolds before our eyes on the emptiest of sets, in the barest of rooms. If Shawn, usually seen on screen as a buffoon, is mesmerising as the bitter Vanya, the heart of the play is Julianna Moore as his radiant young wife, Yelena, whose beauty seems to inspire only discontent and resentment.

Malle lets the actors act (and Gregory direct) content simply to capture the essence of the play and performances as it builds to a surprisingly violent climax. Well, violent by 19th century standards, anyway. Don’t expect any Tarantino shoot outs or other pyrotechnics. Even Mamet resists the temptation to slip in a four letter word. But even without costumes and settings, Vanya demonstrates that great drama can exhilarate on its own terms.