The play portrays the visit of an elderly professor and his glamorous, much younger second wife, Yelena, to the rural estate that supports their urban lifestyle. Two friends—Vanya, brother of the professor's late first wife, who has long managed the estate, and Astrov, the local doctor—both fall under Yelena's spell while bemoaning the ennui of their provincial existence. Sonya, the professor's daughter by his first wife, who has worked with Vanya to keep the estate going, suffers from her unrequited feelings for Astrov. Matters are brought to a crisis when the professor announces his intention to sell the estate, Vanya and Sonya's home, with a view to investing the proceeds to achieve a higher income for himself and his wife.
Background
Uncle Vanya is unique among Chekhov's major plays because it is essentially an extensive reworking of The Wood Demon, a play he published a decade earlier.[1] By elucidating the specific changes Chekhov made during the revision process—these include reducing the cast from almost two dozen down to nine, changing the climactic suicide of The Wood Demon into the famous failed homicide of Uncle Vanya, and altering the original happy ending into an ambiguous, 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.
Rayfield cites recent scholarship suggesting Chekhov revised The Wood Demon during his trip to the island of Sakhalin, a prison colony in Eastern Russia, in 1891. [citation needed]
Characters and cast
Aleksandr Vladimirovich Serebryakov (Алекса́ндр Влади́мирович Серебряко́в): a retired university professor, who has lived for years in the city on the earnings of his late first wife's rural estate, managed for him by Vanya and Sonya.
Helena Andreyevna Serebryakova (Yelena) (Еле́на Андре́евна Серебряко́ва): Serebryakov's young and beautiful second wife. She is 27 years old.
Sofia Alexandrovna Serebryakova (Sonya) (Со́фья Алекса́ндровна Серебряко́ва): Serebryakov's daughter from his first marriage. She is of a marriageable age, but is considered plain.
Maria Vasilyevna Voynitskaya (Мари́я Васи́льевна Войни́цкая): the widow of a privy councillor and mother of Vanya (and of Vanya's late sister, Serebryakov's first wife).
Ivan Petrovich Voynitsky ("Uncle Vanya") (Ива́н Петро́вич Войни́цкий): Maria's son and Sonya's uncle, also brother-in-law of Serebryakov, he is the title character of the play. He is 47 years old.
Mikhail Lvovich Astrov (Михаи́л Льво́вич А́стров): a middle-aged country doctor. His preoccupation with the destruction of forests is one of the earlier discussions of ecological problems in world literature.
Ilya Ilych Telegin (Илья́ Ильи́ч Теле́гин; nicknamed "Waffles" for his pockmarked skin): an impoverished landowner, who now lives on the estate as a dependent of the family.
Marina Timofeevna (Мари́на Тимофе́евна): an old nurse.
Uncle Vanya has been produced on Broadway ten times from 1924 to 2024.[7][8]
Plot
Act I
At Professor Serebryakov's country estate, Astrov and Marina discuss how old Astrov has grown and his boredom with life as a country doctor. Vanya enters and complains of the disruption caused by the visit of Serebryakov and his wife, Yelena. Serebryakov, Yelena, Sonya, and Telegin return from a walk. Out of earshot of Serebryakov, Vanya calls him "a learned old dried mackerel" and belittles his achievements. Vanya's mother, Maria Vasilyevna, who idolizes Serebryakov, objects. Vanya also praises Yelena's beauty, arguing that faithfulness to an old man like Serebryakov is an immoral waste of vitality.
Astrov is forced to depart to attend to a patient, after making a speech on the preservation of the forests, a subject he is passionate about. Vanya declares his love to an exasperated Yelena.
Act II
Several days later. Before going to bed, Serebryakov complains of pain and old age. Astrov arrives but the professor refuses to see him. After Serebryakov falls asleep, Yelena and Vanya talk. She speaks of the discord in the house, and Vanya speaks of dashed hopes. He feels that he has misspent his youth and he associates his unrequited love for Yelena with the disappointment of his life. Yelena refuses to listen. Vanya believed in Serebryakov's greatness and was happy to support Serebryakov's work; he has become disillusioned with the professor and his life feels empty. Astrov returns and the two talk. Sonya chides Vanya for his drinking, and points out that only work is truly fulfilling.
A storm starts and Astrov talks to Sonya about the house's suffocating atmosphere; he says Serebryakov is difficult, Vanya is a hypochondriac, and Yelena is charming but idle. Sonya begs Astrov to stop drinking, telling him it is unworthy of him. It becomes clear that Sonya is in love with him and that he is unaware of her feelings.
Astrov leaves; Yelena enters and makes peace with Sonya, after mutual antagonism. Yelena reassures Sonya that she had strong feelings for Serebryakov when she married him, though that has proved illusory. Yelena confesses her unhappiness, and Sonya eulogises Astrov. In a happy mood, Sonya goes to ask the professor if Yelena may play the piano. Sonya returns with his negative answer.
Act III
Uncle Vanya at the Moscow Art Theatre (1899), Act III
Vanya, Sonya, and Yelena have been called together by Serebryakov. Vanya urges Yelena, once again, to break free. Sonya complains to Yelena that she has loved Astrov for years but he doesn't notice her. Yelena volunteers to question Astrov and find out if he is in love with Sonya. Sonya is pleased, but wonders whether uncertainty is better than knowledge.
When Yelena asks Astrov about his feelings for Sonya, he says he has none, thinking that Yelena has brought up the subject of love to encourage him to confess his own feelings for her. Astrov kisses Yelena, and Vanya sees them. Upset, Yelena begs Vanya to use his influence to allow her and the professor to leave immediately. Yelena tells Sonya that Astrov doesn't love her.
Serebryakov proposes to solve the family's financial problems by selling the estate and investing the proceeds, which will bring in a significantly higher income (and, he hopes, leave enough over to buy a villa for himself and Yelena in Finland). Angrily, Vanya asks where he, Sonya, and his mother would live, protests that the estate rightly belongs to Sonya, and that Serebryakov has never appreciated his self-sacrifice in managing the property. Vanya begins to rage against the professor, blaming him for his own failures, wildly claiming that, without Serebryakov to hold him back, he could have been a second Schopenhauer or Dostoevsky. He cries out to his mother, but Maria insists that Vanya listen to the professor. Serebryakov insults Vanya, who storms out. Yelena begs to be taken away, 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, chased by Vanya, wielding a pistol. He fires again at the professor, but misses. He throws the gun down in self-disgust.
Act IV
A few hours later, Marina and Telegin discuss the planned departure of Serebryakov and Yelena. Vanya and Astrov enter, Astrov saying that in this district, only he and Vanya were "decent, cultured men" and that 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 it, which he eventually does.
Yelena and Serebryakov bid farewell. When Yelena says goodbye to Astrov, she 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 settle accounts, Maria reads a pamphlet, and Marina knits. Vanya complains of the heaviness of his heart, and Sonya, in response, speaks of living, working, and the rewards of the afterlife: "And our life will grow peaceful, tender, sweet as a caress…. You've had no joy in your life; but wait, Uncle Vanya, wait…. We shall rest."
Although the play had previous small runs in provincial theatres in 1898, its metropolitan première took place on 7 November [O.S. 26 October] 1899 at the Moscow Art Theatre. Constantin Stanislavski played the role of Astrov while Chekhov's future wife Olga Knipper played Yelena. The initial reviews were favorable but pointed to defects in both the play and the performances. 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 improved.[9]Uncle Vanya became a permanent fixture in the Moscow Art Theatre.
The play was adapted as the stage-play Dear Uncle by the British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, who reset it in the 1930s Lake District. This adaptation premiered from July to September 2011 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.[10]
In 2023, an off-off-Broadway production of Uncle Vanya performed in an unmarked Manhattan loft for an audience of 40. Directed by Jack Serio and using a translation by Paul Schmidt, the cast featured Will Brill as Astrov, Julia Chan as Yelena, David Cromer as Vanya, Will Dagger as Telegin, Marin Ireland as Sonya, Bill Irwin as Serebryakov (replaced by Thomas Jay Ryan), Virginia Wing as Marina, Ann McDonough as Maria, and Nathan Malin as Yefim.[11]
The Fifth Elephant, a 1999 novel by Terry Pratchett, includes a pastiche of Chekhov plays in which "the gloomy and purposeless trousers of Uncle Vanya" are loaned to Captain Vimes.[14]
Life Sucks: Or the Present Ridiculous, a 2015 stage adaptation by Aaron Posner, premiered at Theater J in Washington, DC.[15]
Uncle Vanya, a version of the star-studded 1962–63 Chichester Festival stage production, directed for the stage by Laurence Olivier, who played Astrov, and also starring Michael Redgrave as Vanya, Max Adrian as Professor Serebryakov, Rosemary Harris as Yelena, and Olivier's wife Joan Plowright as Sonya. Harold Hobson of The Sunday Times described the Chichester production as "the admitted master achievement in British twentieth-century theatre" while The New Yorker called it "probably the best 'Vanya' in English we shall ever see".[18]
August, a 1996 English film adaptation, set in Wales, directed by and starring Anthony Hopkins in the Vanya role. Hopkins played Astrov in a BBC Play of the Month production in 1970.
Sonya's Story, an opera adapted by director Sally Burgess, composer Neal Thornton and designer Charles Phu, portraying events in the play Uncle Vanya from the character Sonya's perspective, premiered in 2010.
Uncle Vanya, a 2012 adaptation by Annie Baker premiered at Soho Repertory Theatre on June 7. It was directed by Sam Gold, starred Reed Birney as Vanya, and closed on July 22.[19] Working closely with a Russian translator, Baker created her own original and contemporary adaptation of the play.[20]
Chekhov: Fast & Furious, a multimedia theatric performance project by the Franco-Austrian performance collective Superamas which translates the themes of the “old” theatre into our time, premiered in 2018 at the Vienna Festival in Austria.[21]
Drive My Car, a 2021 film by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, includes a production of Uncle Vanya, with the characters echoing the emotional turmoil of Chekhov's characters as they reveal their trauma and deeply complicated feelings.[23] It is based on a short story collection by Haruki Murakami.[24]
^"Uncle Vanya (Abridged)". Unveiling Vanya. Middlebury College Russian Department. 16 April 2011. Archived from the original on 16 January 2022. Retrieved 16 January 2022.
Chekhov, Anton (1916) [1899]. Uncle Vanya: Scenes from Country Life. Marian Fell (trans.) (Tenth ed.). Salt Lake City: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 2008-10-13.
