But the words are the only easy-going aspect of the play. In reality, Uncle Vanya is about people refusing to listen to each other tripping and tumbling through a humid, heavy summer at a Dacha stirred up by the arrival of Yelena, the new, young wife of The Professor (he has a proper name in Russian, but I think it's mentioned twice, if that; so I feel safe simply calling him The Professor). The Professor is about as old and crotchety as you can get. He, like many of the characters, refuses to listen to others: his doctor, Astrov (played by Hugo Weaving, which was rather surprising to me because I had no idea that he was in this production) diagnoses him with one disorder and he insists its something else; his new wife, Yelena (played by Cate Blanchett), insists that she's satisfied while he complains both about making trouble for her and about not being paid enough attention. Astrov talks to Sonya, the Professor's daughter from a previous marriage who adores him, about being unable to love while she sits and grins, remembering a moment of companionable physical contact. Sonya makes it clear to Astrov that she loves him and he doesn't listen. Admittedly he is hammered at the time (Astrov is an alcoholic even by Russian standards), but Sonya is obvious to the point where Yelena comments that everyone - even the servants - at the Dacha knows except Astrov. Vanya, the Professor's brother in law, makes it clear to Yelena that he loves her; and, while she hears, she refuses to listen.
The characters stumble (and dance and run) desperately
through their own little worlds, refusing to hear each other, in an incredibly
physical performance. Moments of
physical contact are almost always blundering here, as if people don’t know the
rules for connecting, though you never doubt that connection is what they long
for more than anything. An entire complex relationship is established through
the ways in which Vanya and Yelena paw at each other in irritation and
affection and (in Vanya’s case only) something like love. In contrast, when two characters are unconditionally, magnetically attracted to each other - like Yelena and Astrov are - their movements explode. I honestly can't say I've ever seen a more passionate, immediate, and acrobatic kiss as the one they share in the final scene. It's really quite remarkable.
But that's all they're allowed. Uncle Vanya is all about missed connections
and cues (metaphorically speaking). The
characters are consumed by lethargy, boredom, and regret over their
unsatisfactory lives. They bemoan their old age, mourn the years that they have
wasted in drudgery, pine over lost loves, and muse bitterly over what might
have been if their lots had been different. They suffer from a sense of loss without knowing what they forfeited. Mostly, they seem to think they have lost their place in the world. They describe themselves as "strange", "eccentric", or "alien". Astrov especially seems out of place. His devotion to forestry and conservation would make him right at home among certain groups in modern America.
Even if they begin feeling out of place, the arrival of Yelena further unmoors the characters. Schedules are changed, work is ignored, and
habits violently displaced by the arrival of this beauty to the Dacha. Because of her, the residents of this small
town are set pacing, dancing, wrestling with the air, burying themselves under
blankets, and shooing one another away like flies. Chekov always begs the question: are these characters farcical or tragic? The director, Tamas Ascher, seems to answer this question with a resounding both. The play's climax features as weapons a pistol and a bouquet of "sad, autumn roses" in a scene as rowdy and demented as any Marx brothers production and as despairing as a Sophocles chorus.
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