Overview
Anton Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya in a new version by Christopher
Hampton. "It's often
said that the best of the Chekhov plays is the one you've seen most
recently. Uncle Vanya doesn't have a suicide, like The Seagull,
or an adulterous couple and a duel more or less indistinguishable from
murder, like Three Sisters; nor does it seem to announce the end of an
era, like The Cherry Orchard: all it has is a series of ludicrously
bungled attempts at murder and suicide and adultery. Perhaps these
failures are what makes it feel the saddest and most truthful of these
great tragi-comedies, in which, possibly unique to all drama, not a
single word seems redundant or out of place." - From the translator's
introduction.