The playwright, himself, commented, "The artist must not be a judge of his characters or of what they say but only an objective observer. In her programme note for the 1973 production of The Seagull at Chichester Festival Theatre Caryl Brahms commented, "Chekhov wrote, on the whole, with irony about the human condition - an irony based on observation and softened by understanding". "People dine, simply dine, and at that moment their happiness is decided or their lives shattered." And, just like Monet, he is a first-rate impressionist, using snippets from his characters' lives to build up the narrative and atmosphere of his plays. What he does is to explore the emotional web that links these ordinary people, exposing the pain and absurdity, comedy and poignancy that lie beneath the surface of everyday events. Let everything on the stage be just as complicated and at the same time just as simple as in life. Life must be exactly as it is, and people as they are - not on stilts. A play should be written in which people arrive, go away, have dinner, talk about the weather, and play cards. The play is sly, ironical, sexy, funny, farcical and also serious, compassionate and painful.Ĭhekhov believed that the theatre should "show life and men as they are, and not as they would look if you put them on stilts. In Uncle Vanya Chekhov negotiates a delicate balancing act between the comic and the tragic. George Calderon translated two of Chekhov's plays in 1912 and called them "tragedies with the texture of comedy". Add to this intrusion the summer heat alcohol unaccustomed idleness family quarrels sexual proximity awkward love affairs bungled seductions emotions and lives turned topsy-turvy and we have the ingredients for - well, farce or tragedy? Like all four of Chekhov's major plays, it deals with the effect that visitors have on a family living in a Russian backwater. Uncle Vanya is a study of ordinary people who are comically inept at managing their own lives. Mother of Vanya and the professor's first wife Voynitski (Maman) widow of a high official, Ilya Telegin (Waffles) an impoverished landowner
Sonya, his daughter by a previous marriage
Alexander Serebryakov, a retired professor
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