Vanya on 42nd Street Vanya on 42nd Street Vanya on 42nd Street is a 1994 film directed by Louis Malle and screenplay by Andre Gregory. The film is an intimate, interpretive performance of the play "Uncle Vanya" by Anton Chekhov as adapted by David Mamet. The film stars Wallace Shawn and Julianne Moore. Over the course of three years, director Andre Gregory and a group of actors came together on a voluntary basis in order to better understand Chekhov's work through performance workshops. Staged and filmed entirely within the vacant shell of the then-abandoned New Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street in New York City,
Uncle Vanya has grown, and how he feels bored with his life as a country doctor. Vanya enters, and complains about how all order has been disrupted since the professor and his wife, Yelena, arrived. As they’re talking, Serebryakov, Yelena, Sonya, and Telegin return from a walk. Out of the professor's earshot, Vanya calls him "a learned old dried mackerel," criticizing him for his pomposity and the smallness of his achievements. Vanya’s mother, Maria Vasilyevna, who idolizes Serebryakov, objects to her son’s derogatory comments. Vanya also praises the professor’s wife, Yelena, for her beauty, arguing that faithfulness to an old man like