It’s Chekhov 101 to say his characters inhabit separate worlds that rarely converge. All those rueful doctors, vain landowners, stoic laborers, and pretentious artists jabber across the samovar without really connecting or changing. Sure, they level pistols at each other (and themselves) or profess undying love, but such flashes of passion smack of solipsistic play-acting. Therein lies the comedy dusted with melancholy. Still, if Chekhov’s people are not in the same play, you hope the actors inhabiting them will be. Such is not really the case in Lincoln Center Theater’s starry but arid Uncle Vanya, staged with noncommittal chill by Lila Neugebauer.
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Mimi Lien’s scenic design bluntly underscores the sense that these “Russians” (scare quotes because they’re vaguely Americanized) are planets whose orbital paths do not intersect. Her set pieces crouch at the edges of the Vivian Beaumont’s broad stage, emphasizing psychic distance by maximizing negative space. The first two acts have a backyard, cottagecore vibe—picnic table, folding chairs, bench, and a huge black-and-white photograph of birch trees covering the back wall. (All very wood-ish.) The second act brings us inside the home of agricultural manager Vanya (Steve Carell)........