![]() Two thirds of its text and all but one of its characters survive from The Wood Demon, a play he wrote in the summer of 1889 and which he never published (a hundred or so lithograph copies of the manuscript circulated in the provinces it was printed in 1911, seven years after Chekhov’s death). Uncle Vanya has a history almost unique in the annals of the theatre: it is a triumph refashioned from a disaster. ![]() ![]() ![]() Above all, Uncle Vanya’s 1899 performance in Moscow Arts Theatre established Chekhov as Russia’s – even Europe’s – leading dramatist, overthrowing the opinion (still current among the more snobbish denizens of St Petersburg) that Chekhov was a magnificent story writer whose plays dupe a gullible public into thinking him a good dramatist. Of all Chekhov’s plays, it is the most economical (just nine speaking parts, and a running time rarely much over 90 minutes) never before had he blended humour (albeit black) with tragedy (in the sense of Russian toska, longing for something you can never have) never had he so subtly integrated his own ideas about the destruction of youth by age, of nature by humanity, into the views of his characters. Uncle Vanya was the first major Chekhov drama which was received to the author’s satisfaction. Until 1899, every time a play by Chekhov – Ivanov, The Wood Demon or The Seagull – opened in Moscow or St Petersburg, the reception by actors, audience and critics was so traumatic for the author that he immediately took a train to the other city. ![]()
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