Word: serebriakov
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...play of violent action or of individual detachment. A stale retired professor (Serebriakov), his young wife (Elena), and the daughter (Sonia), brother (Vanya), and mother of his first wife live cramped lives on a faded Russian estate. A visitor, the overworked local doctor (Astrov) wanders in and out of the household. Sonia loves the doctor, who is unaware of her as a woman. Vanya, who feels oppressed and trapped, shares with the doctor a love for Elena, who is quite miserable with her old and pompous husband. The doctor dreams of forestry and the future, yet sees his education...
Until the final departure of Serebriakov and Elena, the one real act in the play is Uncle Vanya's overflow of rage at Serebriakov because the overweeningly self-assertive professor has stifled his life. Vanya shoots Serebriakov twice, once on stage at close range. He misses. Thus the tensions between the principals, their coordinated emotions, and their interdependent sadness are vital. And this is a dimension of Chekhov that the Adams actors rarely create...
Richard Smithies plays Serebriakov with so much force and nearly boisterous gusto that even his admirable technical skill and control of such details as his hands, could not quite create a convincing aged man. The contrast to the rather pale followers who inevitably surrounded him made his polished performance slightly too heavy for the play, although he succeeded completely in any comic passages. Mij Gohr, playing his wife, was sensitive and graceful, giving a quiet impression of sensitive acting; she was also, however, a bit frozen. As Sonia, Charlotte Clark looked believable, but stood rather rigidly, often in awkward closeness...
...assess him-outsiders who saw him compatriots who broke with him. U.S. Businessman Donald Nelson, caught up in the heady transactions of Lend-Lease, found Stalin "a regular fellow, and a very friendly sort of fellow, in fact." "He is the most vindictive man on earth," said Leonid Serebriakov, who had known Stalin for years. "If he lives long enough, he will get every one of us who ever injured him in speech or action." Stalin purged Serebriakov, along with some millions of others, in 1937. Wrote starry-eyed Joseph E. (Mission to Moscow) Davies, who was U.S. Ambassador during...