“We all really believe there's a crowd,” Andrew Scott said on Friday morning in March. Scott may include most people. An extraordinarily sensitive and courageous actor, he stars in an off-Broadway production of Chekhov's melancholy comedy, Uncle Vanya, and stars in a solo lead. The title, like the cast list, is condensed simply into “vanya.”
This London-produced New York move opened several nights ago. In this version, playwright Simon Stevens moved from 19th century Russia to present-day country Ireland. Scott plays a central character. This is the man who sacrificed his own ambition to support his reckless stepbrother. He also plays stepbrothers, put-up nie, neglected young wife, and several others. Scott has been alone on stage all the time. That stage can feel very crowded.
New York Times critic Jesse Green described Scott as a “human Swiss Army knife” in his performance. Green, Scott's work in “Fleabag,” “Ripley,” and his recent film, “All Our Stranger,” also called Scott a “machine of sadness.” This is a general opinion. Variety calls him “the heartache of the new prince of Hollywood.”
This morning, 48-year-old Scott looked unusually sad, but he was somewhat clingy. The plan was to walk towards Little Island and then along the Hudson River towards the theatre, but the bad weather changed that.
“What a god, it's windy,” he said on the street. (“You won't get sick,” his spokesperson worried.) So Scott retreated to a nearby pier shelter with a breakfast burrito and day one orange juice. The window looked out into the river. Water reflected in his eyes – cut, grey –
He wears that seriousness lightly, but Scott is serious. And if his intelligence and empathy are clear, he wears these lightly too. Vanity avoids him. (Even though he knows he's going to be photographed, he doesn't seem to know his hair with his hair.) And as he sat on the bench, wearing a munching brown cardigan, I rarely met an actor who had any less pretense or emotion than an actor. He later let go of the cardigan. His heart was embroidered on his red shirt, just above his chest.
Scott was not planning to play all the roles of “Vanya.” Despite moving the action to Ireland, Stevens, a playwright Scott has often collaborated with, wrote more traditional adaptations of plays. However, when I read through early with Stevens and director Sam Yates, Scott had a scene where he took both parts. Electricity started.
Initially, despite the electricity, Scott resisted. He was worried that playing all the roles would feel like a gimmick or an air movement. However, as he became more familiar with the play, he began to see connections between the characters. “They're all just talking about their very specific pain and how it's very singular,” he said. “In fact, they're all much more similar than they say.” Having one actor on stage, erasing the physical differences between the characters, only emphasizes this.
The rehearsals were strict, but they were also magical. Learning the line was tough – “Yes (exp) fiercely,” Scott said, but once again he played Hamlet, so he could handle it. He didn't want to do elaborate accents, but Irish listeners in particular distinguish between classes and locales between characters, but he didn't want elaborate accents. The change in costume (Scott has always worn her clothes) has been Knicks. There he was satisfied to find gestures and small props to define each person. Country Detector Michael bouncing off the tennis ball. Ivan, the vanya in the title, wears sunglasses and toys on a sound effect machine. Sonia, Ivan's nie, writes the dishware version. As the play progresses, these props and gestures disappear, and only Scott's energy defines the role.
“The audience doesn't want to go: Which is this?” he said. “But you want them to do a little bit of work, you're leaning forward a little.”
Somehow it all succeeds. Even the scene where Scott has to snare with him becomes clear. And the heat is amazing. (If you're one of the fans obsessed with Scott's hot priest character in the TV comedy “Fleabag,” that might not be so surprising.) “It represents sex in a very basic way,” he said. In every scene, Scott is very specific in where he can see, how he stands, where he places other characters. Sometimes, on stage alone, he has to adjust his steps to avoid hitting them.
“It's just an endless experiment,” he said. “I'm still constantly learning about it.”
Scott doesn't think he's sadder than most people, but he knows he often plays the sad character, the character of “Vanya.” (He also has lines (“Ripley”, “Sherlock”) on the psychopath, worryingly.) He recognizes his talent for empathy, and he knows he is probably better at understanding and communicating emotions than most people. “But it's not just sadness,” he said. “I laugh very easily. The idea that people are sensitive or vulnerable is very beautiful in some respects. So I'm not afraid of that. Or at least there's no great fear.”
And what is really more universal than sadness?
“Who's not sad?” he said. “For example, who isn't sad? I don't understand that.”
“Vanya” is a play about the potential of waste in its face. So it is the most mild irony that Scott hasn't wasted him. Sometimes that outlook is difficult. “It's potentially scary to think that every time you play, you might be able to meet your potential,” he said. Often he wakes up in the morning and thinks he can't do it again that night. But he does so, and in all its many and contradictions, he makes himself a ship for mankind. As an actor, he's big enough to contain it all.
“The fact that we all act in an absolute, beautiful, completely contradictory way as humans, that is what my job represents,” he said.
