Word: vanya
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...UNCLE VANYA by ANTON CHEKHOV
...these elements are present in Uncle Vanya, and they are vividly realized in a superbly exhilarating revival directed by Mike Nichols. An arid, aging retired professor, Serebryakov (Barnard Hughes) returns to the family estate with his young wife Elena (Julie Christie). The visit is a catalytic agent that exposes the alternately tragic and comic tensions of unrequited loves and lives. The caustically self-pitying Uncle Vanya (Nicol Williamson), who has worked the estate along with his niece Sonya (Elizabeth Wilson), realizes that he has sacrificed his life in the service of a pompous academic fraud. The mute adoration he offers...
...land, but disillusion has sunk him in drink. He too falls half in love with Elena, and she with him, but she is too indolent and conventional to make an erotic leap to freedom. Poor Sonya loves Astrov-a futile, heartbreaking hope that exists only to be dashed. When Vanya learns that Serebryakov proposes to sell the estate, he goes staggeringly blind with rage and fires two revolver shots at the professor, missing both times-the ultimate, humiliating proof of his ineffectualness. The visitors depart. Sonya tries to comfort herself and Vanya with a vague hope of heaven where...
...bruised hearts never blurred the amused clinical eye he focuses on their petty, self-deluding foibles. Chekhov frowned on directors who made his plays too glum and autumnal, and Nichols, with his agile comic flair, has certainly avoided doing that. He gets marvelous assistance from Nicol Williamson, whose Vanya is compacted with a mischievous, sardonic, self-mocking wit that not only defines his own character, but also makes a comment on the situation of everyone in the play...
Burtt shows great feeling for Chekov's word-music, though her other great speech, the one about how forests make people kind and gentle, is hard to understand. Joseph Wilkins as Vanya and Virginia Feingold as Helena whine too much; but David Zucker as Astrov and Esquire Jauchem as the Professor ("something between a well-preserved biscuit and an educated fish," Vanya calls him) aren...