Uncle Vanya: A Play

By Anton Chekhov

One of the most important dramatic works from the acclaimed Russian playwright and “father of the modern dysfunctional family comedy” (Hyde Park Herald).
 
A classic four-act romantic tragedy, Uncle Vanya is essentially a reworking of an earlier Chekhov play, The Wood Demon. It tells the story of a retired university professor and his extended middle-class family. When the professor unexpectedly announces he is about to sell his country estate, scheming between the play’s nine principle characters ensues. Tensions crest when their security is threatened and disappointments from the past—unrequited feelings, miseries, and failures—shockingly resurface.
 
One could think of Uncle Vanya, which had its Moscow premiere in 1899 and remains a favorite of theatergoers to this day, “as the forerunner of existential tragicomedies like Waiting for Godot and No Exit. Underlying the characters’ boredom, frustration, and desperation is the monumental realization that their lives are meaningless and have no purpose, even if some of them are in denial” (Hyde Park Herald).
 
“Uncle Vanya is a study of ennui, unfulfilled desires, and the misery of rural isolation. Yet it’s also funny—full of Chekhov’s social satire and disdain for hypocrisy.” —Go London

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Mar 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781504061094

Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian doctor, short-story writer, and playwright. Born in the port city of Taganrog, Chekhov was the third child of Pavel, a grocer and devout Christian, and Yevgeniya, a natural storyteller. His father, a violent and arrogant man, abused his wife and children and would serve as the inspiration for many of the writer’s most tyrannical and hypocritical characters. Chekhov studied at the Greek School in Taganrog, where he learned Ancient Greek. In 1876, his father’s debts forced the family to relocate to Moscow, where they lived in poverty while Anton remained in Taganrog to settle their finances and finish his studies. During this time, he worked odd jobs while reading extensively and composing his first written works. He joined his family in Moscow in 1879, pursuing a medical degree while writing short stories for entertainment and to support his parents and siblings. In 1876, after finishing his degree and contracting tuberculosis, he began writing for St. Petersburg’s Novoye Vremya, a popular paper which helped him to launch his literary career and gain financial independence. A friend and colleague of Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, and Ivan Bunin, Chekhov is remembered today for his skillful observations of everyday Russian life, his deeply psychological character studies, and his mastery of language and the rhythms of conversation.

Book preview

Act I.

A country house on a terrace. In front of it a garden. In an avenue of trees, under an old poplar, stands a table set for tea, with a samovar, etc. Some benches and chairs stand near the table. On one of them is lying a guitar. A hammock is swung near the table. It is three o’clock in the afternoon of a cloudy day.

[M

ARINA,

a quiet, grey-haired, little old woman, is sitting at the table knitting a stocking.]

[A

STROFF

is walking up and down near her.]

M

ARINA.

[Pouring some tea into a glass.] Take a little tea, my son.

A

STROFF

. [Takes the glass from her unwillingly.] Somehow, I don’t seem to want any.

M

ARINA.

Then will you have a little vodka instead?

A

STROFF

. No, I don’t drink vodka every day, and besides, it is too hot now. [A pause.] Tell me, nurse, how long have we known each other?

M

ARINA.

[Thoughtfully.] Let me see, how long is it? Lord—help me to remember. You first came here, into our parts—let me think—when was it? Sonia’s mother was still alive—it was two winters before she died; that was eleven years ago—[thoughtfully.] perhaps more.

A

STROFF

. Have I changed much since then?

M

ARINA.

Oh, yes. You were handsome and young then, and now you are an old man and not handsome any more. You drink, too.

A

STROFF

. Yes, ten years have made me another man. And why? Because I am overworked. Nurse, I am on my feet from dawn till dusk. I know no rest; at night I tremble under my blankets for fear of being dragged out to visit some one who is sick; I have toiled without repose or a day’s freedom since I have known you; could I help growing old? And then, existence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this life, and goes heavily. Every one about here is silly, and after living with them for two or three years one grows silly oneself. It is inevitable. [Twisting his moustache.] See what a long moustache I have grown. A foolish, long moustache. Yes, I am as silly as the rest, nurse, but not as stupid; no, I have not grown stupid. Thank God, my brain is not addled yet, though my feelings have grown numb. I ask nothing, I need nothing, I love no one, unless it is yourself alone. [He kisses her head.] I had a nurse just like you when I was a child.

M

ARINA.

Don’t you want a bite of something to eat?

A

STROFF

. No. During the third week of Lent I went to the epidemic at Malitskoi. It was eruptive typhoid. The peasants were all lying side by side in their huts, and the calves and pigs were running about the floor among the sick. Such dirt there was, and smoke! Unspeakable! I slaved among those people all day, not a crumb passed my lips, but when I got home there was still no rest for me; a switchman was carried in from the railroad; I laid him on the operating table and he went and died in my arms under chloroform, and then my feelings that should have been deadened awoke again, my conscience tortured me as if I had killed the man. I sat down and closed my eyes—like this—and thought: will our descendants two hundred years from now, for whom we are breaking the road, remember to give us a kind word? No, nurse, they will forget.

M

ARINA.

Man is forgetful, but God remembers.

A

STROFF

. Thank you for that. You have spoken the truth.

[Enter V

OITSKI

from the house. He has been asleep after dinner and looks rather dishevelled. He sits down on the bench and straightens his collar.]

V

OITSKI.

H’m. Yes. [A pause.] Yes.

A

STROFF

. Have you been asleep?

V

OITSKI.

Yes, very much so. [He yawns.] Ever since the Professor and his wife have come, our daily life seems to have jumped the track. I sleep at the wrong time, drink wine, and eat all sorts of messes for luncheon and dinner. It isn’t wholesome. Sonia and I used to work together and never had an idle moment, but now Sonia works alone and I only eat and drink and sleep. Something is wrong.

M

ARINA.

[Shaking her head.] Such a confusion in the house! The Professor gets up at twelve, the samovar is kept boiling all the morning, and everything has to wait for him. Before they came we used to have dinner at one o’clock, like everybody else, but now we have it at seven. The Professor sits up all night writing and reading, and suddenly, at two o’clock, there goes the bell! Heavens, what is that? The Professor wants some tea! Wake the servants, light the samovar! Lord, what disorder!

A

STROFF.

Will they be here long?

V

OITSKI.

A hundred years! The Professor has decided to make his home here.

M

ARINA.

Look at this now! The samovar has been on the table for two hours, and they are all out walking!

V

OITSKI.

All right, don’t get excited; here they come.

Reviews for Uncle Vanya

[devil_llama · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A classic work of angst and despair, set in pre-revolutionary Russia. This is a play in four acts, and one of Chekov's most famous. It is a tale of mediocrity, and the pains of mediocrity in people who know they were not born to be mediocre. An extended family is thrown together for a summer, and seething resentments gradually bubble to the surface and threaten to destroy the title character, a man brought down by his own character flaws, but unable to recognize that, and attributing it to the whims of others. This play would probably not make it through a modern theatre workshop; it is filled with long expository speeches, and you go for quite a while without knowing what the stakes are, and never quite figure out who the antagonist and protagonist is, because the characters seem to change roles throughout the course of the play. Still, it can speak to a modern audience, if they will allow themselves to slow down to a pace unknown in our modern world, and move with the characters through their lazy days.

[charles_tatum_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Even the Russians have problems...I enjoyed this play immensely, although some of the relations were hard to keep track of. The characters were strongly written, and everything flowed really well.

[rinnreads · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I read this for a LAMDA exam, and to be honest the reason I did not enjoy it was probably due to the amount of times I had to go through one scene, but it's put me off of reading any more Chekov =/

[hemlokgang · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I found this drama to be quite dark. The setting, rural Russia in the late 1800s, was interesting. I believe Chekhov was trying to make a statement not just about the rural wealthy, but about humanity in general. He describes a degeneration of the relationship between man and nature, an indolent, ignorant oblivion, which destructs without replacing. A very dark drama.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I related to this at at least nine broadly related points (the wasted life, the tragic ridiculousness of the old man who can't catch up with the fact that old he is, the feeling of universal decline emerging from one's own decline, how watching other people laugh and cry makes you laugh and cry for maybe motor neuron reasons, how very very hard it is to walk away from someone you KNOW is gonna kiss you for the second time ever, how sad it is to be smart and unaccomplished and peevish, how it's all a fuckin dumb waste man, etc., etc.), and yet it still didn't really compare to Three Sisters on any level really for me, showing the superiority of art over life I guess.

[alanwpowers · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

First saw this at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, nearly five decades ago (1969)--before I had read it in translation or (parts) in Russian. (The title, Дядя Ваня can be understood after two weeks of Russian.) The Guthrie had the tone just right--a comedy with a sad ending? Rather like so many Shakespeare tragedies with (somewhat) happy endings-- RIII,even MacBeth. Back then it was rare to see Checkov anything but dreary, quasi-tragic, similar to Ibsen. Тогда это было редко видеть Checkov ничего, кроме тоскливой, квази-трагический, похожий на Ибсена. Dr. Astrov's resounding support for the forest resounded with me, whose family has lived in New England since 1661, and who grew up summers in Maine on 40 acres of field and forest, the nearest inhabited farm a mile away. Astrov might appall modern pretend conservationists paid to manage forests but who sell off the oak to create better hunting. (Even Brazilians who strip rainforest don't pretend they're land protectionists.) Amazing how telling, how contemporary, land issues here and in the Cherry Orchard are. Of course, land was always a plague in Russia: anybody might own huge property, and not be rich. Wealth required owning the peasants to work tracts, мужики. Gogol's Chichikov discovers a tax loophole which can make him appear rich (thus marriageable), by buying dead people still on the lists. Amusing throughout. Hilarious when one sentimental landowner ironically named Bitch-son, собакевич, refuses to sell his former carriage-repairmen (?).I suppose trees are the modern tax-roll "souls": valuable when dead, as pretend conservationists know.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read while listening to the Librivox full cast recording, which I will recommend. I found having different people reading the different parts (plus their intonations at certain times) really helped me keep track of who was who.

This play struck me as having a lot going on even through it is mostly talk rather than action. Vanya (Ivan) has been caring for his niece Sonia's estate after his sister died; now, his (former?) brother-in-law & his second wife Helena are visiting. Helena exerts a disruptive influence on all the male characters which irresistably reminded me of Helen of Troy.

I was struck by how modern some of the ideas expressed were. One example of this is the doctor's ideas about forests - his thoughts about deforestation and climate could have been spoken by someone today. I hadn't realized that these ideas existed in the late 1800s when Chekhov wrote this play!