A Play by Anton Tchekov
Translated from the Russian by CONSTANCE GARNETT
Music chosen, played, and sung by ALEXIS CHESS
The action takes place on the Professor's estate in Provincial Russia, at the end of the last century
Production by BARBARA BURNHAM
Loudly-expressed admiration of Tchekov has long been considered a hall-mark of highbrowism. Which is unfortunate. It is not Tchekov's fault but his misfortune that he has fallen so often into the hands of English intellectuals who have insisted on producing him in a way that astonishes his fellowcountrymen. For Tchekov was not only a humanist, but a humorist; as much a humorist as Dickens. From 1880, when he was twenty, to about 1885, he contributed prolifically to comic papers and, though he did not remain a professional humorist, he had a keener eye than almost any other Russian writer for the absurdities and futilities of everyday life (and of the dreamy, lackadaisical Russian character in particular).
Tchekov himself was not in the least like a typical Tchekov character. Far from being an indolent day-dreamer he was a hard-working medical practitioner, who remained in harness almost to the end of his life, and it is possible that Astrov, the doctor in Uncle Vanya, is to a certain extent a self-portrait.
Uncle Vanya ' will be repeated in the Regional programme tomorrow at 8.0