The Water Engine/Mr. Happiness

by David Mamet (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  1998

  $16.38

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $14.67

  * Pocket Paperbacks of the world's great plays

• New

  Paperback
  1987

  $15.98

  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)