Uncle Vanya: Scenes from Country Life (Modern Plays)

by David Lean (Translator), A.P. Chekhov (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  1998

  $16.10

  David Lan's new version of one of Chekhov's greatest plays, was commissioned for a co-production between the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Young Vic. Directed by Katie Mitchell, it premiered at the Young Vic, London, in March 1998, a century after its Uncle Vanya is the first of Chekhov's three great masterpieces. Set on a remote farm in the Ukraine, it tells of two obsessive love affairs that lead nowhere, and a flirtation that brings disaster. Written towards the end of the 1890s, it casts a diamond-hard glance towards our century. A notably sharp, bright translation (The Times)

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $14.79

  * Pocket Paperbacks of the world's great plays

• New

  Paperback
  1987

  $16.10

  Along with Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya is credited as one of Chekhov's masterpieces and a significant precursor of modern drama. Set on a country estate in late nineteenth century Russia, Uncle Vanya is in part a study of the enervation of Russian middle-class provincial life. The major dynamics between the characters themselves are centred on two obsessive love affairs that lead nowhere and a flirtation that brings disaster. Mixing the tragic and the absurd and dealing with a form that allows for ambiguity and contradiction, Uncle Vanya has been deemed the first modernist play . (David Lan)