It all started at school with the red
headed girl. My strategy to win her over was to impress her with my knack for
learning languages. So I found myself enrolled in voluntary Russian lessons at
my high-school in Salzburg (Austria) sitting next to the object of my desires. What remains from that episode is my ability
to state in passable Russian that Grigory is a tractor driver in a kolkhoz and
my liking for the sounds most things Russian, from wistful novels to Fabergé
eggs. And so, when I had the opportunity last night to join numerous elegantly
dressed members of the Russian-speaking community in London to see Chekhov’s “Uncle
Vanya” directed by Hollywood great Andrei Konchalowski I grabbed the high
priced ticket without hesitation.
Like most of the males in the audience, I
am a middle-aged man with a sizeable paunch, but contrary to most men in the
audience I was not accompanied by a stunningly good-looking tall thin Russian
lady half my age. Moreover, I belonged to the small minority of those present
who depended on the English surtitles to follow the action on stage.
Vanya is member of a dysfunctional
Russian landowning family and runs the estate for his brother in law the
Professor, who is visiting the estate. The Professor was married to Vanya’s beloved late sister. Vanya’s family was so in awe of his
supposed intellectual prowess that they supported his career to the fullest and
made over the estate to him and his first wife. In the meantime the Professor
has remarried a young and beautiful wife, and Vanya at 40 years of age has realised that the
old man is anything but brilliant; a legend only in his own mind. So all the sacrifice Vanya’s family has made
has been in vain and Vanya’s life feels wasted. Vanya is now dead keen to persuade
the Professor’s wife to have fling with him. Meanwhile the Doctor, a friend of
the family, who comes to visit the estate from time to time, is the object of desire of Vanya’s
niece, daughter of his sister and the
Professor. But the Doctor, a man prone to
melancholy, ecological sensibilities and vodka is impervious to Sonya's sincere
adoration as she lacks more obvious womanly charms. Charms the doctor finds the Professor's
wife having in abundance. As the Professor's stay at the estate is
bringing the normal residents’ lives into disarray, some other quite comic characters such as the old nanny, the conflict averse "Waffles" Telegenin and Vanya’s rather stupid mother make their appearance.
Chekhov is brilliant at showing us how just
below our cool, calm and collected surface, events can force us to show our
hilariously embarrassing tragic-clownish selves. For the female characters this
results in letting the hypocrisy of bourgeois conventions stop them from grabbing
a little happiness when the chance presents itself. For the men in the play, it
is a rush of the blood to other parts of their anatomy than those most adapted
to rational thought. The result is a fascinating and entertaining portrait of
the human condition ending in a moving outcry to the heavens before things settle
back to their state of deceptive normality.
It is greatly enjoyable to see Chekhov performed
in Russian by a company which has Russian sensibility at its heart. The comedy
predominates as Pavel Derevyanko stands out as a fantastic Uncle Vanya on the verge of the nervous breakdown. On the
other hand Yulya Vissotzkaya gives an moving performance with a highlight of
true pathos in the role of Sonya.
Andrei Konchalovski’s production of
Uncle Vanya in London is definitely worth a detour to the Wyndham.
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