Word: vanya
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Vanyusha." So it went all through the week of triumph. He was besieged by professional offers and trailed by adoring crowds that recognized him on sight, called him first "Vanya'' (Little Van) and later "Vanyusha," an even more intimately endearing diminutive. His arrivals and departures at the conservatory set off small riots. Girls sent fresh blossoms to his practice room, and when word got around that he had lost weight and that he suffers from colitis, platoons of females turned up with bags of oranges. One determined girl even popped up in his room at the Hotel Peking...
...actors just sitting on their behinds and reading the play a la Stanislavsky. Dame Edith Evans says she has to move on her feet in order to think and react imaginatively. You might be able to take your cast off to a farm for six months to read Uncle Vanya or The Cherry Orchard, but you can't do that with Tunnel of Love...
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...
...production. As Doctor Astrov, Robert Jordan is extraordinarily right. His skillful make-up helps his exceptional voice and delightful, slightly grand manner; he becomes both noble and sad, within seriousness, especially in his most effective scene, and displays a remarkable facility in portraying comedy where he is drunk. As Vanya, John Mautner is at moments persuasive. His performance vacillates uneasily, however, and his awkward arms and constantly nervous voice and eyes were occasionally distracting. Even if Vanya is nervous, Mautner could well be more relaxed...
...whole, despite the incomplete integration, the individual acting and the intriguing production in the round were enough to make much of Uncle Vanya...