There are critics who have said that the work will be difficult to follow for those unfamiliar with Uncle Vanya: I completely disagree. The text ensures that the story appears through well-chosen windows at all times, and that the thread, the conflict, and the characters' reactions are followed without any problem. I wonder, in fact, if those critics have seen the play (or if they have listened to it with a minimum of attention): whether it's the merit of Joel Joan or Stephens, this is by no means a problem.
However: to contextualize and out of pure deference, we will point out that Sonia and her uncle Vanya have dedicated their lives to working intensely to finance the filmmaker's life of old Alexandre (in Chekhov's play, an art columnist). This devotion to him comes to an end when, with his return to the estate, they realize that he is just a failure who will never know success (and because of his desire to sell the estate where they both live). To this must be added the frustration caused by the chain of unrequited loves that takes place on stage. For me, the interpretive and argumentative heart of the play is this.
Sonia is madly in love with Doctor Miquel, who in turn is in love with Helena (who rejects him). In parallel, Uncle Vanya also pursues Helena, but she pragmatically prefers to stay by old Alexandre's side, despite not being in love with him. This sentimental vaudeville is what shapes the most commendable scenes of interpretive exuberance in the play, with a Joel Joan chasing himself, kissing himself, crashing into himself and at the same time shying away from himself. If he wanted us to forget about him, as is the goal of any actor when adopting a new skin, Joel Joan achieves it up to eight times and with eight different skins. Surely, if we glimpse him a little —just a little, and because he has decided (I suppose) to look more like him— it is with Uncle Vanya: the character hides, from time to time and surely more towards the end, some quite unmistakable Joeljoanesque gestures (who knows if due to age, character or the actor's comfort).
But not only love or sex expose Joel Joan's virtuosity (innate exhibitionism), but also Alexandre's totally plausible old age, with his decrepit soul and his "give me all this back" that will one day trap us all. Yes, a cane helps to hunch the back and identify the character, but these types of elements do not help Joel Joan: they help us. I mean that resorting to a handkerchief (Sonia) or dark glasses (Vània) or the cane itself is not a support for the actor, who would not need objects that change his appearance, but a small help for any spectator who may need it. You know, with so many people on stage, some distracted ones can get lost.
But in this play there is no loss: Vània flows in text and interpretive virtuosity, confronts us with a daring that this country is quite lacking, reunites us with a Joel Joan whom we missed (and who, despite everything, does not deign to appear during the entire hour and a half that we wait for him) and with the modern version of an ancient text that works forwards and backwards, however you assemble or disassemble it, as all classics do. You can even introduce Catalan winks ("this is a Basque, a Catalan and a Galician...") or references to Chaplin to pull Chekhov's beard, but Vània endures and is embodied, character by character, in our homegrown Joel and in our dangerous era. An era in which everything is so frantic, even so schizophrenic, that we feel strangely identified when a great actor unfolds all the roles of the auca before us.