Word: vanya
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Brazil, and he hasn't had a movie role this large since Sleuth in 1972. If for no other reason, you should see this film, to see him biting Gregory Peck, hissing at Uta Hagen, or grimacing at Rosemary Harris' attempt to seduce him. (Remember the film of Uncle Vanya, where he lusted after...
Chekhov had a matchless co-author -the audience. That is what makes him actor-proof. Any of his plays may be somewhat miscast, or slightly askew in performance, as this Stratford production of Uncle Vanya is, yet the audience customarily leaves the theater in a state of emotional agitation, if only by what it has itself contributed...
...plays, only this haunting "if only" of decisions not made, options not taken. Chekhov speaks about people whose lives are past retrieving. He conveys a pressing sense Of loss-lost dreams, lost opportunities, lost hopes, lost loves, lost lives. At one point, a character says to Uncle Vanya: "You've been drinking all day. Why?" And he answers: "It helps me forget that I'm not alive...
...other master stroke by which Chekhov gets the audience to be his collaborator lies in his intuitive understanding that the only undying love is unrequited love. In Uncle Vanya, Vanya (William Hutt) is desperately smitten with Elena (Martha Henry), wife of the crabbed Professor Serebriakov (Max Helpmann), who is many years her senior. Not out of any binding moral scruples, Elena treats Vanya's advances with lacerating indifference. Sonya (Marti Maraden), Vanya's niece, has adored Dr. Astrov (Brian Bedford) for six years, and he has never been aware of it for six seconds. Astrov in turn lusts...
...simmering minihell of incessantly frustrated emotions in a barren provincial outpost of non-civilization, this particular cast stirs up only a tempest in a samovar. Vanya should be compacted of anguish; Hutt is merely consumed by pique. When he shoots at Serebriakov and misses him twice, one hears only the toy pistol retort of a toyed-with emotion...