Uncle Vanya – Anton Chekhov, 1898 [Translation by Ann Dunnigan] ★

A Play about Nothing

How can one put this gently? Many if not most people of education and culture regard Anton Chekhov as the master of modern drama, and if his Uncle Vanya is any indication, they are all horribly wrong.

Chekhov wrote for an audience that wanted, as he did, the ambiguity of real human experience, that sought a mirror held up to everyday life and molded into something that held its own on stage. He wrote to a specific Russian mindset that understand life was harsh and short.

I get all that. I want to embrace Uncle Vanya because not doing so marks one as a knuckle-dragging philistine. But I can’t. I really hate this play.

For one thing, its plot is nebulous. Subtitled “Scenes from Country Life” and set entirely on the rural estate of a retired academic and his young wife, it amounts to a snapshot portrait of lives being spent in interminable repose, bitterly decrying their lot.

A scene from a 2017 Chicago production of Uncle Vanya, which is set entirely inside a sprawling house whose inhabitants know entirely too much about each other. Says one: "There’s nothing worse than knowing someone’s secret and not being able to help."
Photo by Liz Lauren from https://chicago.suntimes.com/2017/2/23/18383953/uncle-vanya-speaks-to-the-anguished-nature-of-living

The academic, Serebryakov, and his second wife Elena are the foci of the play, but not its central characters. Certainly not Serebryakov, anyway. As the estate owner, he is alternately the object of veneration or scorn of three other figures who matter much more:

·       Serebryakov’s daughter by his first marriage, Sonya, noble and loving and largely ignored by most everyone else;

·       A doctor, Astrov, who selflessly looks after both the poor and the trees of the countryside while lusting after pretty, young Elena;

·       Ivan Voinitsky, Serebryakov’s brother-in-law by his first marriage and caretaker of the estate, who also lusts for Elena.

The difficulties these people have working out their issues with one another form the basis of the play. Needless to say, it is messy:

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: There is something very wrong in this house… the professor is irritable, he doesn’t trust me and is afraid of you [Voinitsky]; Sonya is angry at her father, angry at me – she hasn’t spoken to me for two weeks; you hate my husband… I am on edge and have been on the verge of tears twenty times today… There is something very wrong in this house. [Act II]

While Serebryakov is the senior male character of the play, Voinitsky is the one called Uncle Vanya by Sonya and no one else; in this the title provides a clue as to which characters merit our greatest attention.

A scene from an early production of Uncle Vanya directed by and starring method acting pioneer Konstantin Stanislavski, who played Astrov. Here Voinitsky is consoled by his niece Sonya.
Image from https://neilrathmell.com/2020/11/17/why-do-people-find-chekhov-boring/

Voinitsky’s frustrated petulance provides most of the drama – and nearly all of the humor – of this play, at least as I read it:

VOINITSKY: I’ll be quiet. I’ll be quiet and apologize.

[A pause.]

ELENA ANDREYEVNA: It’s a fine day today… not too hot…

VOINITSKY: A fine day to hang oneself… [Act I]

Voinitsky’s anger shows up as bitterness at Serebryakov, “a learned fish” whose academic work has failed to outlive him, but actually seems triggered by Elena’s sexual inaccessibility, being as she is loyal to her husband.

Voinitsky is not at all coy about his desire for Elena, openly complaining her fidelity is misplaced. “There is a great deal of rhetoric in it, but no logic,” he says [Act I].

Just as frustrated, but more noble about it, is Astrov, who takes time away from his lifesaving and reforestation duties to drink in Elena’s loveliness over cups of linden tea.

While more restrained than Voinitsky, who paws at Elena against her will, Astrov goes so far as to accuse Elena of being a minx:

ASTROV: You charming bird of prey, don’t look at me like that, I’m no gosling.

ELENA ANDREYEVNA [bewildered]: Bird of prey? I don’t understand…

ASTROV: A beautiful, fluffy little weasel… You must have victims. [Act III]

Toby Jones as Astrov and Rosalind Eleazar as Elena in a modernized 2020 London production that wowed critics until its run was shut down just a few weeks in by the pandemic. It returned to the stage that August as a camera-only production.
Photo by Johan Persson from https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jan/23/uncle-vanya-review-harold-pinter-theatre-london-toby-jones

This handling of Elena is one strike against the play being in tune with modern sensibilities, as she really does nothing in the text to merit Astrov’s accusation. If Astrov is meant to represent a higher moral perspective, and I think he is given his way of pontificating on humanity’s ills, ecological preservation, and other Chekhov concerns, one is left to wonder whether a central problem of Uncle Vanya as its author sees it is that Elena won’t submit to extramarital advances.

To be honest, I have no idea what the play is really supposed to be about, another major issue for me.

The translation of my Signet Classic edition, by Ann Dunnigan, has a decidedly flat tone, but the dryness seems Chekhov’s. There is some ambiguity in what the characters say to one another, which can be employed differently by different directors. A 1963 film co-directed and starring Laurence Olivier as Dr. Astrov presents Elena being romantically attracted to Astrov, even visibly tempted by the idea of an affair, but I think this is Olivier’s notion more than it is Chekhov’s.

Laurence Olivier as Astrov shares a tender moment with Joan Plowright's Sonya, who pines for him but knows she can never have him. "I’ll bear it, and go on bearing it till my life comes to an end…" she concludes.
Image from https://greenwichlibrary.kanopy.com/video/uncle-vanya

On its own, with just the words on the page, it is really a play about nothing. For two acts, people sit around and about how bored and tired they are, how nothing ever happens.

They talk openly about their fears, their provincialism, their dislike for one another, and their dissatisfaction with life:

VOINITSKY: When one has no real life, one lives on illusions. It’s better than nothing. [Act II]

Trouble is brewing, though, culminating in the third act when a suddenly deranged Voinitsky picks up a pistol and tries to kill Serebryakov when the latter announces plans to sell the estate and move elsewhere with Elena. It is less an episode of tragedy than of black comedy, but at least something happens.

I probably should have put a spoiler there, except that invests it with more significance than Chekhov gives it. The incident turns out another meaningless act that neither accomplishes nor changes anything.

In fact, the sameness of the situation may well have been Chekhov’s core point, that these simple provincials, even the more learned ones, do little of consequence with their lives except watch it go by, helplessly.

Anton Chekhov. In some productions, Dr. Astrov wears pince-nez spectacles much like the author is doing here. Drawing a connection between the writer and the character, both doctors with affection for nature and country living, is unavoidable.
Image from https://timenote.info/en/Anton-Chekhov

In the end, another note of ambiguity is sounded by Sonya, who has just watched her one hope of love ride off into the night:

SONYA: We shall rejoice and look back on our present troubles with tenderness, with a smile – and we shall rest. I have faith, Uncle, I have fervent, passionate faith… [Kneeling before him, lays her head on his hand; in a weary voice.] We shall rest! [Act IV]

Uncle Vanya was a rewrite of another Chekhov play, The Wood Demon, which had been unsuccessful on stage. One would think a reworked play would be structurally lean and offer a developed plot, but Uncle Vanya seems resolved only by a lack of resolution, with a fourth act that fades slowly into nothingness. Dr. Astrov may speak with meaning about the peasants he encounters, but he also admits he can’t make himself care about them. That seems to sum up Chekhov’s draggy attitude, too.