Most Maine residents, especially transplants, know what it’s like to have their lives upended for a few days or weeks every summer by out-of-state visitors. Their schedules become your schedules and their priorities push yours right off the table and onto Sand Beach.
This is exactly what happens in Anton Chekov’s play “Uncle Vanya,” produced by counter/current:collective at a former barn in Appleton.
Alexander Serebriakov (Joseph Cote), a retired professor, shows up at his late wife’s country estate with his much younger wife, Yelena (Caraline Harshman), in tow. Their visit throws the household into disarray with Sonya (Aleah Sebrey), the professor’s daughter by his first wife, and his brother-in-law Vanya (Joshua McCarey) unable to get much of anything done. The chaos extends to a neighbor, Dr. Astrov (John Jurcheck).
This Belfast-based theater company presents site-specific plays and “Uncle Vanya” is their most ambitious yet. It succeeds on almost every level taking the audience, limited to about 20 people per show, deep into the lives of these characters at the turn of the 19th century. Chekhov wrote the play in 1899.
Two years ago, counter/current produced “The Aliens” on a tiny patch of grass behind a downtown Belfast store front. In early 2025, it moved into the local YMCA for “Circle Mirror Transformation.” Last summer, the two-person play “Lungs” was launched on the former Belfast hospital lot, now a construction site.
Director Madeline Bugeau-Heartt stages Act One outside the barn and the other three acts inside the building on the second floor, which is being converted into living spaces or offices. The period furniture and costumes put the audience in Chekhov’s world rather than a more formal set with walls, doors and windows.
She uses one large room for Acts Two and Three, a dining room and parlor, respectively. The play’s final act takes place in Vanya’s bedroom, a cramped space that emphasizes how trapped he and his niece are by their circumstances. Bugeau-Heartt gets fine and mostly consistent performances out of her actors.
McCarey as Vanya bears a striking resemblance to Welsh actor Michael Sheen in his COVID days when he stopped shaving and let his hair grow. The Sedgwick-based actor wrings every ounce of pathos and anger from the script. His dismay over Yelena’s rejection of him as a lover, McCarey wears like a shroud, yet he also shows how the deep and loving connection he has with his niece Sonya is a kind of saving grace that he can embrace. Such angst-filled and honest performances are rare.
If Vanya is the dark soul amongst these characters, then Jurcheck’s doctor is the light. Astrov also lusts for Yelena, who works hard at rejecting him. Jurcheck, a founder of the theater company, gives a charismatic performance as the family physician and friend. He is charming and insightful and through the role, brings some real joy to the stage that, at times, overrides the misery and darkness the other characters wrestle with. It is his most memorable performance in Maine so far.
As the professor, Cote is pompous, arrogant, self absorbed and a great, big bore. The actor is a tall, big-boned man and he uses that to his advantage as the character intimidates those in his orbit. Cote vividly shows the audience why he is disliked and despised by the other characters.
Harshman’s Yelena is no femme fatale but she exudes an intelligence that Vanya and Astrov find irresistible. She expertly portrays the bright, educated young woman trapped in a marriage that is not what she imagined with a man old enough to be her grandfather. When Yelena surrenders to passion in Act Four, it comes as a bit of surprise not hinted at in the previous acts.
Sebrey is an acting student at Boston University whose Sonya is sweet, kind, thoughtful and in love with the neighboring doctor, who is unaware of her feelings. She is especially believable in her scenes with Vanya and Astrov and offers them both hopeful ways forward after Yelena rejects both men.
Once again, counter/current:collective uses a non-traditional space to create vivid, thought-provoking and entertaining theater.
Counter/current:collective’s production of “Uncle Vanya” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday at an Appleton farm 30 minutes from Belfast through Aug. 2. For more information visit becountercurrent.com.