I Am Uncle Vanya
By a stroke of good luck, I have seen three Chekhov plays since the fall in outstanding productions, and I have fallen in love with this melancholy Russian. I said I wasn’t going to talk about theater here; I’m not a reviewer and have never wanted to be one. But having seen Uncle Vanya the other night, a couple of weeks after The Cherry Orchard and a couple of months after The Seagull, I realized why actors are obsessed with these plays.
Chekhov understood longing for something more, something greater. He understood human pain and folly. He certainly understood the boredom of everyday living! Some of his characters are laughably deluded; many are oblivious. On one level, the plays are merely slices of life, which explains why they are done badly so often. But when the actor and part are a good match, and when the rhythm is right, you think… I know these people! That’s ME.
The women in Chekhov are problematic. (I haven’t seen Three Sisters in 20 years; too bad THAT one isn’t coming to town so I can reconsider those girls.) They tend to be over-dramatic pains in the butt, but whatever. He wrote them more than 100 years ago. And by the accounts I’ve read, Chekhov himself loved women and was something of a babe magnet, notwithstanding his TB.
As for the character of Uncle Vanya — I absolutely adore this man. When his brother-in-law, the full-of-himself old professor, decamps at the dacha with his beautiful young second wife, Vanya proceeds to have a mini-breakdown as he contemplates all those years he spent balancing the ledger book, doing the same old thing day after day. Uncle Vanya is like Peggy Lee, belting, “Is that all there is?!” Watching him rant and lament and wave a pistol is just about the most fun anybody could have in a theater.
Tags: Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya