Vanya on 42nd Street

Vanya on 42nd Street is a 1994 offering starring Wallace Shawn and featuring Julianne Moore in a relatively early role. The premise of the film is that we are watching a rehearsal of a play, starting with the director, actors, and guests arriving at the theater (a wonderfully decrepit Amsterdam), and there is a beautiful and subtle transition from the actors playing "themselves" as they settle down before the rehearsal to the actual rehearsal itself. Unfortunately, this is the high point of the film. The actors do an admirable job, and we get something of preview to Moore's later work, though she was hardly unknown because of the Fugitive (and, I like to think, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle), but aside from that one moment of transition at the start of the film, you can easily forget that this is a rehearsal because there are no "intrusions" upon the performance, and it essentially becomes a straight film transcription of a stage performance. As such, it's difficult to recommend this as a film, but much to recommend it as a stage play.