I saw 'Vanya', the one-man (Andrew Scott) version of this classic play, produced by the National Theatre, when it was streamed to cinemas on 22nd February 2024. I felt at the time that it was a superb showcase for Andrew Scott but that I needed to read the script and to see a more conventional production to be able to understand why it is regarded as one of the plays that made Chekhov's reputation.
It is typical Chekhov in that it revolves around a group of upper-class people whose lives seem to have no meaning. The estate supports Alexandre Serebriakov, a professor, who has spent most of his life as an absentee landlord, using the income from the estate to pursue his academic career. He came into possession of the estate through his first marriage and technically it belongs to Sonia, his daughter by that first marriage. He has now retired to the estate with his new wife, Yeliena, who is much younger than him. Ivan 'Vanya' Voinitsky is Sonia's uncle; it was his father who originally owned the estate and he gave up his share of the inheritance in order to help Serebriakov; he now runs the estate with the help of Sonia and Ilyia 'Waffles' Teleyghin, an impoverished hanger-on whose family originally owned the estate.
Other characters include Sonia's old nanny Marina and Mikhail Astrov, a local doctor.
Both Vanya and the doctor are in love with Yeliena, who loves her husband. Sonia is hopelessly and unrequitedly in love with the doctor.
It's always difficult judging a play just from the script, especially when you are relying on a translation. But here goes.
It is constructed from four acts, each of a single scene. The first two acts set the scene. The play really comes alive in act three when Vanya discovers the doctor and Yeliena kissing, we discover Alexandre's plans, and a gun is fired. I felt that this came rather late in the play and would have been more appropriate in the middle, especially just before the interval. The final act deals with the aftermath which seems to be that everyone will return to the status quo before the start of the play.
There were several moments which seemed to be clumsy ways of giving the audience information. For example, in the first few lines the doctor says: "By the way, Nanny, how many years is it we've known each other?" Later in the same act Vanya has a long speech in which he tells the audience about Professor Serebriakov's career. Later the nurse tells Serebriakov about "Vera Petrovna, Soniecheka's mother" which seems ludicrous given that Serebriakov was Vera's husband and is Soniechka's father, facts of which he is well aware. Clearly there is a problem for a playwright in having to impart information to the audience which the characters already know but these moments stood out as maladroit.
I was surprised by what seemed to be the 'green' message of the play. The doctor is a tree-planter and an ecofreak who gives a mini-lecture on the disappearing forests of the locality: "The Russian forests are literally groaning under the axe, millions of trees are being destroyed, the homes of animals and birds are being laid waste, the rivers are getting shallow and drying up, wonderful scenery is disappearing." (Act One) But I suspect that Chekhov, rather than propagandising in favour of sustainability, is in fact using the decline of the forests as a metaphor for what he sees as the pointless worsening of life because the doctor later goes on to say: "You may say that ... the old way of life naturally had to give place to the new ... and I would agree - if on the site of these ruined forests there were now roads and railways, if there were workshops, and factories, and schools. Then the people would have been healthier, better off, and better educated - but there's nothing of the sort here. There are still the same swamps and mosquitoes, the same absence of roads, and the dire poverty, and typhus, and diphtheria, and fires. Here we have a picture of decay due to an insupportable struggle for existence, it is decay caused by inertia, by ignorance, by utter irresponsibility. ... Already practically everything has been destroyed, but nothing has been created to take its place." (Act Three)
The overall message of the play is hopelessness. Not only is there the doctor's ecological despair. There are the lovers. Naturally, no-one is in love with someone who loves them back. The ending of the play brings us back to where we were before it started. Vanya says, in Act Two: "Day and night I feel suffocated by the thought that my life has been irretrievably lost. I have no past - it has all been stupidly wasted on trifles - while the present is awful because it's so meaningless." And, in Act Four, in the final speech of the play, Sonia says: "We shall go on living, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through a long succession of days and tedious evenings. We shall patiently suffer the trials which Fate imposes on us; we shall work for others, now and in our old age, and we shall have no rest. When our time comes we shall die submissively, and over there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we've suffered, that we've wept, that we've had a bitter life, and God will take pity on us." I think she thinks that will be a happy ending!
Selected quotes:
- "You were young and handsome then, but you've aged now. And you're not as good-looking as you were." (Act One)
- "Ignorance is better ... At least there's some hope." (Act Three)
February 2024; 62 pages
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