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Uncle Vanya
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Uncle Vanya ( – Dyadya Vanya) is a tragicomedy by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov published in 1899. Its first major performance was in 1900 under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski.
ncle Vanya is unique among Chekhov's major plays because it is essentially an extensive reworking of a play published a decade earlier, The Wood Demon. By elucidating the specific changes Chekhov made during the revision process -- these include reducing the cast-list from almost two-dozen down to a lean nine, changing the climactic suicide of the The Wood Demon into the famous failed homicide of Uncle Vanya, and altering the original happy ending into a more problematic, less final resolution -- critics such as Donald Rayfield, Richard Gilman, and Eric Bentley have sought to chart the development of Chekhov's dramaturgical method through the 1890s.
Uncle Vanya was published in 1899, but it is difficult to determine when the work was originally finished, or when the revision process took place.
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Encyclopedia
Uncle Vanya ( – Dyadya Vanya) is a tragicomedy by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov published in 1899. Its first major performance was in 1900 under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski.
Background
Uncle Vanya is unique among Chekhov's major plays because it is essentially an extensive reworking of a play published a decade earlier, The Wood Demon. By elucidating the specific changes Chekhov made during the revision process -- these include reducing the cast-list from almost two-dozen down to a lean nine, changing the climactic suicide of the The Wood Demon into the famous failed homicide of Uncle Vanya, and altering the original happy ending into a more problematic, less final resolution -- critics such as Donald Rayfield, Richard Gilman, and Eric Bentley have sought to chart the development of Chekhov's dramaturgical method through the 1890s.
Uncle Vanya was published in 1899, but it is difficult to determine when the work was originally finished, or when the revision process took place. Rayfield cites recent scholarship suggesting Chekhov revisited The Wood Demon during his trip to the island of Sakhalin, a prison colony in Eastern Russia, in 1891.
Characters
- Aleksandr Vladimirovich Serebryakov - a retired university professor.
- Yelena Andreyevna Serebryakov - Professor Serebryakov's young and beautiful second wife. She is 27 years old.
- Sofya Alexandrovna Serebryakov (Sonya) - Professor Serebryakov's plain daughter from his first marriage.
- Maria Vasilyevna Voynitsky - the widow of a privy councilor and mother of the first wife of the professor.
- Ivan Petrovitch Voynitsky ("Uncle Vanya") - Maria's son and Sonya's uncle, the title character of the play.
- Mikhail Lvovich Astrov - a country doctor and philosopher.
- Ilya Ilych Telegin ("Waffles") - an impoverished landowner.
- Marina - an old nurse.
- A Workman
Plot
Act I
A garden in the family estate of Serebryakov. Astrov and Marina discuss how old he has grown, and how he feels bored with his life as a country doctor. Vanya enters, yawning from a nap, the three complain 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. Vanya calls the professor “a learned old dried mackerel,” criticizing him for his pomposity and the smallness of his achievements. Vanya’s mother, Maria Vasilyevna, who idolizes Serbryakov, 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 Serebryakov means silencing youth and emotions — an immoral waste of vitality. Astrov is forced to depart to attend a patient, but not before delivering a speech on the preservation of trees, a subject he is very passionate about. Act I closes with Yelena becoming exasperated as Vanya declares his love for her.
Act II
Serebryakov’s dining room, several days later. It is late at night. Before going to bed, Serebryakov complains of being in pain and of old age. Astrov arrives, having been sent for by Sonya, but the professor refuses to see him. After Serebryakov is asleep, Yelena and Vanya talk. She speaks of the discord in the house, and Vanya speaks of dashed hopes. He feels he’s misspent his youth, and he associates his unrequited love for Yelena with the devastation of his life. Yelena refuses to listen. Alone, Vanya questions why he did not fall in love with Yelena when he first met her ten years before, when it would have been possible for the two to have married and had a happy life together. At that time, Vanya believed in Serebryakov’s greatness and loved him; now those beliefs are gone and his life feels empty. As Vanya agonizes over his past, Astrov returns, the worse for drink, and the two talk together. Sonya chides Vanya for his drinking, and responds pragmatically to his reflections on the futility of a wasted life, pointing out that only work is truly fulfilling.
Outside, a storm is gathering and Astrov talks with Sonya about the suffocating atmosphere in the house; Astrov says Serebryakov is difficult, Vanya is a hypochondriac, and Yelena is charming but idle. He laments that it’s a long time since he loved anyone. Sonya begs Astrov to stop drinking, telling him he is beautiful and should create rather than simply destroying himself. The two discuss love, during which it becomes clear that Sonya is in love with the Doctor and that he is unaware of her feelings.
When the doctor leaves, Yelena enters and makes peace with Sonya, after an apparently long period of mutual anger and antagonism. Trying to resolve their past difficulties, Yelena reassures Sonya that she had strong feelings for her father when she married him, though the love proved false. The two women converse at cross purposes, with Yelena confessing her unhappiness and Sonya gushing about the doctor’s virtues. In a happy mood, Sonya leaves to ask the professor if she may play the piano. Sonya returns with his negative answer, which quickly dampens the mood.
Act III
Vanya, Sonya, and Yelena are in the living room of Serebryakov’s house, having been called there by Serbryakov. Vanya calls Yelena a water nymph and urges her, once again, to break free. Sonya complains to Yelena that she has loved Astrov for six years and that because she is not beautiful, he doesn’t notice her. Yelena volunteers to question Astrov and find out if he’s in love with Sonya. Sonya is pleased, but before agreeing she wonders whether uncertainty is better because then, at least, there is hope.
When Yelena asks Astrov about his feelings for Sonya, he says he has none and concludes that Yelena has brought up the subject of love to encourage him to confess his own emotions for her. Astrov kisses Yelena, and Vanya witnesses the embrace. Upset, Yelena begs Vanya to use his influence so that she and the professor can leave immediately. Before Serebryakov can make his announcement, Yelena conveys to Sonya the message that Astrov doesn’t love her.
Serebryakov proposes that he solve the family’s financial problems by selling the estate, using the proceeds to invest in interest-bearing paper and buy a villa for himself and Yelena in Finland. Angrily, Vanya asks where he, Sonya, and his mother would live. He protests that the estate belongs to Sonya and that Vanya has never been appreciated for the self-sacrifice it took to rid the property of debt. As Vanya’s anger mounts, he begins to rave against the professor, blaming him for the failure of his life, wildly claiming that without Serbryakov to stop him, he could have been a second Schopenhauer or Dostoevsky. In despair, he cries out to his mother, but instead of comforting her son, Maria insists that Vanya listen to the professor. Serebryakov insults Vanya, who storms out of the room. Yelena begs to be taken away from the country and Sonya pleads with her father on Vanya's behalf. Serebryakov exits to confront Vanya further. A shot is heard from offstage and Serebryakov returns, being chased by Vanya, who is wielding a loaded pistol. He fires the pistol again, point blank at the professor, but misses. He throws it down in disgust and sinks into a chair.
Act IV
As the final act opens, a few hours later, Marina and Telegin wind wool and discuss the planned departure of Serebryakov and Yelena. When Vanya and Astrov enter, Astrov says that in this district only he and Vanya were “decent, cultured men” and that ten years of “narrow-minded life” have made them vulgar. Vanya has stolen a vial of Astrov’s morphine, presumably to commit suicide; Sonya and Astrov beg him to return the narcotic, which he eventually does.
Yelena and Serebryakov bid everyone farewell. When Yelena says goodbye to Astrov, she admits to having been carried away by him, embraces him, and takes one of his pencils as a souvenir. Serebryakov and Vanya make their peace, agreeing all will be as it was before. Once the outsiders have departed, Sonya and Vanya pay bills, Maria reads a pamphlet, and Marina knits. Vanya complains of the heaviness of his heart, and Sonya speaks of living, working, and the rewards of the afterlife: “We shall hear the angels, we shall see the whole sky all diamonds, we shall see how all earthly evil, all our sufferings, are drowned in the mercy that will fill the whole world. And our life will grow peaceful, tender, sweet as a caress. . . . In your life you haven’t known what joy was; but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait. . . . We shall rest.”
Themes
Uncle Vanya is thematically preoccupied with what might sentimentally be called the wasted life, and a survey of the characters and their respective miseries will make this clear. Admittedly, however, it remains somewhat difficult to organize these concepts into a coherent theme as they belong more to the play's "nastroenie," its melancholic mood or atmosphere, than to a distinct program of ideas.
Productions
Although the play had previous small runs in provincial theaters in 1898, its metropolitan premiere took place on October 26, 1899 at the Moscow Art Theater. Constantine Stanislavsky played the role of Astrov while Chekhov's future wife Olga Knipper played the beautiful Yelena. The initial reviews were favorable yet pointed to defects in both the play and the acting. However, as the staging and the acting improved over successive performances, and as "the public understood better its inner meaning and nuances of feeling", the reviews soon turned to raves. Uncle Vanya, like The Seagull, became a permanent fixture in the Moscow Art Theater.
Other actors who have appeared in notable stage productions of Uncle Vanya include Anthony Sher, Ian McKellen, William Hurt, George C. Scott, Derek Jacobi and Trevor Eve.
The Reduced Shakespeare Company performed a shortened version of the play on their radio show which contained only two lines, thus:
Are you Uncle Vanya?
Film adaptations
Over the years, Uncle Vanya has been adapted for film several times.
- Dyadya Vanya, a Russian film version, adapted and directed by Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky in 1972
- A Uncle Vanya (1963 film) version of the star-studded 1963 Chichester Festival stage production, directed for the stage and starring Sir Michael Redgrave, Sir Laurence Olivier, Max Adrian and Joan Plowright ("The finest Uncle Vanya we shall ever see in English," according to one critic.)
- Country Life, an Australian adaptation, stars Sam Neill as the equivalent of Astrov
- Sir Anthony Hopkins directed and starred in August, an English film adaptation.
Awards and nominations
Awards
- 2003 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival
Nominations
- 1992 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival
- 2000 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Revival of a Play
Further reading
External links
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- from 1957 San Francisco International Film Festival
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