Uncle Vanya: A Version of the Play by Anton Chekhov (Acting Edition for Theater Productions) - Softcover

Brian Friel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822217503 ISBN 13: 9780822217503

Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 2000

Synopsis

Along with Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya is credited as one of Chekhov's masterpieces and a significant precursor of modern drama. Set on a country estate in late nineteenth century Russia, Uncle Vanya is in part a study of the enervation of Russian middle-class provincial life. The major dynamics between the characters themselves are centred on two obsessive love affairs that lead nowhere and a flirtation that brings disaster. Mixing the tragic and the absurd and dealing with a form that allows for ambiguity and contradiction, Uncle Vanya has been deemed "the first modernist play". (David Lan)

About this title

From the Back Cover

In Uncle Vanya, a retired professor and his beautiful young wife return to the country estate left by his deceased first wife to find themselves overwhelmed by the stagnant inevitability of the rituals of their life and class and mercilessly taxed by the encroachment of age at the expense of youth. All of the play's characters are plunged into that precarious state where, in Beckett's words, 'the boredom of living is replaced by the suffering of being.'

About the Author

Curt Columbus is Artistic Director of The Trinity Repertory Company. His translations of Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya are in the Plays for Performance series, published by Ivan R. Dee. Mr. Columbus lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822217503
• ISBN 13: 9780822217503
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 72