uNCLE vANYA (but there’s ASMR soap-cutting videos playing…) → Paper Mouth Theatre
Saturday 11th July @ AC Arts Main Theatre
FOUR AND A HALF STARS
Shot by Matt Byrne
Everyone has had a long, hard week. We just want to go and have a good night out at the theatre and forget about the state of the world for a moment. But does our generation have the brain capacity and attention span to sit through a four-act Russian realist play from 1897? Hmm, director Mary Angley knew that that’d be a hard sell. But, what about if it’s still Anton Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya, but with gimmicks and ASMR?
The 14-word title of this play is enough to get curious theatre goers through the door. Chekhov’s work may be foreign to many, but with ASMR, that's a comforting sense of familiarity at least! Uncle Vanya (but there’s ASMR soap-cutting videos playing in the bottom right corner) is part of State Theatre Company’s 2026 season. Emerging from their Spark Program, this is an epic collaboration between Mary Angles and Associates, Paper Mouth Theatre and all artists involved in the process.
Things that hold our attention span these days: the unexpected, multiple sources of stimulation, bright objects, soothing sounds, background music - and yes, this is what you can expect to find in this version of Uncle Vanya.
The play begins as normal. The characters enter Professor Serebryakov’s country estate. Yoz Mensch sleeps onstage as Vanya. Astrov discusses with Marina how he has become bored with life as a doctor, Vanya complains of the visit from Serebryakov’s wife Yelena. I wait in anticipation for how long the cast will keep up this professional act.
The title said ASMR! Where is it?
When we’ve been waiting enough, a phone appears, a microphone is set up, and potatoes start to be peeled, projected live onto the screen backdrop. Giggles ensue. Ah! something to keep us stimulated whilst Vanya gushes over Yelena’s beauty…
The actors commit to the play’s authenticity, with touches of individual absurdity. ASMR aside, they hold our attention as they navigate the intricate dialogue with ease. As the gimmicks come and go, they stay certain in their roles as if it is the original without turning it into a parody. For a script that progresses through conversation, they have all mastered the flow and believability of each character’s motives, desires and fears. But what Angley decides to do is ingeniously switch up their roles at various points throughout the play, boasting the strengths of the cast to effortlessly switch characters. This was another clever ploy to keep us attentive, we can no longer rely on familiar faces to track the plot and who's-who.
At some point, the potatoes become soap, and the screen flashes with an option to skip the monologues, the audience in control of the button. It's just as if we have double-tapped IRL to skip ahead 10, 20, 30 seconds… I’m sure we’ve wished all plays had this function at some point!
Shot by Matt Byrne
Like the characters in the play, we too face existential crisis, and Angley’s enhancements to the script are deliberate adjustments for us. Act II is cut and replaced by Angley (playing themselves as director / also, the Professor) to give us a 3-minute PowerPoint summary, “it’s all character development anyway.” Angley gets it, and she gets us: “we cut the interval, so you don’t have to make small talk in the foyer,” cue sighs of relief. She does a quick Show and Tell that the rifle will get fired later on, so look forward to that! It’s all very comedic, but you also can’t help but wonder why we need all this? Why couldn't we sit through the original? Angley feels this way too as she frantically delivers the Act II summary, and once we’re up to speed, we return.
Vanya is now played by Poppy Mee, who in the original script is meant to witness the scandalous kiss between Astrov (Arran Beatie) and Yelena (Lucy Hass). But, they all pause to acknowledge that this scene has not aged well and give us a synchronised monologue about why it's problematic. They solve this by skipping it entirely, Beatie and Hass swap roles and we move on!
The chaos dial continues to wind up as the play progresses. There is truly a LOT that happens that I cannot spoil for you, but some highlights include the fight scene that becomes a “streamed” boxing match, the halfway quiz show for the audience featuring giveaways! and of course, the ASMR.
There is also a genius moment when dance choreography (by Felicity Boyd) is applied to what would’ve been a serious ‘sit-down’ conversation between Vanya and Astrov.
Ellen Graham plays Sonya consistently throughout, landing the play’s final words to Vanya, but they speak poignantly to us: “We shall live all through the endless procession of days ahead of us…You have never known what it is to be happy, but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait! We shall rest…” Graham’s delivery is powerful, yet quite funny and ironic given the context it is given in (#nospoilers).
It is clear that every single person involved in this process was unafraid to jump in fully, take those outrageous risks, and continue to ask: ‘what if…?” I think this concept of Gen Z-ifying older classic works in this way is an untapped market in which Paper Mouth Theatre now has the monopoly on. I am eager to see how far they can fully lean into their clever commentary of our attention spans. The whole work is a clever, self-aware merging of tradition and virality. Ironically, choosing Uncle Vanya as the vehicle in which to explore these ideas sort of merges the venn diagram of us and the characters into a circle. Our lives are really not that different? We are both blinded by our desires and search for some form of fulfilment. The only difference is, videos of soap can momentarily do that for us these days…
~ By Sophie Tsoulos
Show Run: till 18th July
Theatre: Adelaide College of the Arts Main Theatre, Light Square
Bookings: https://statetheatrecompany.com.au/shows/uncle-vanya/