Melbourne Theatre Company’s artistic director, Anne-Louise Sarks, has collaborated with the award-winning playwright Joanna Murray-Smith to restage Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.

The result is a production that boasts all the momentary thrills of an easy laugh at the expense of the rich characterisation and political resonances that made the 1897 play a classic in the first place. It’s Vanya reimagined as a Noël Coward-esque farce, or a 1960s sitcom delivered in front of a live studio audience. The result is laughable to the point of being disheartening.

Melbourne Theatre Company’s Uncle Vanya. Photo © Pia Johnson

This production comes after a string of restagings of Western classics by Sarks that share a dogged commitment to light-hearted positivism and a broadly comic approach to dialogue. It’s an easily recognisable formula. But beneath its well-trodden conventions lie implicit assumptions about our relationship to these tomes of the past worth questioning.

I do not care about fidelity to Chekhov, really. My issue is that these productions – from 2024’s A Streetcar Named Desire to 2025’s Rebecca – imply that the language and characters in these storied texts need to be decontextualised if they are to...