CALS SHAKES DOES VANYA
The California Shakespeare production of UNCLE VANYA, by Anton Chekhov, was unquestionably the theatrical zenith of the 2008 summer season.
VANYA has come roaring back into modernity again as our host planet wishes it could do something to rid itself of the ungrateful parasites who work tirelessly to destroy it by transforming Eden into a raped denuded landscape, with warming acrid vapors and fetid waters.
The dying Chekhov--he suffered an early demise: age 44, due to tuberculosis--was optimistic that the planet would ultimately be rescued from mankind's willingness to follow an unsustainable trajectory into ecological ruin.
The mavens of Chekhov might argue that UNCLE VANYA is the final adaptation of an earlier draft titled THE WOOD-DEMON.
With the exception of Vanya formerly being George, Astrov having been Khrushchov, and Telegin having been Dyadin, the two cast of characters are pretty much symmetric.
Depending on which Chekhov scholar you believe, VANYA came off the quill as late as 1896, long after THE WOOD-DEMON had already been staged in Moscow in December of 1889.
UNCLE VANYA is unequivocally one of the great masterpieces of world theatre, while THE WOOD-DEMON languishes in VANYA's shadow: "unjustly neglected."
Since few women read this section of Critics' World, there is little need for political correctness, self-censorship or mincing one's opinion.
Let us be blunt: VANYA is a man's play.
Yes, yes Sonya does suffer miserably from unrequited love, but hey that's her chosen leitmotiv; move on as the couples therapists would say.
This critic had a thing for skater Michelle Qwan and all he ever got from it was more restraining orders: so don't preach to us about unrequited love.
At its core is a "siren" or as the California Shakespeare script calls Yelena, "a mermaid."
Helen, Elena, Yelena . . . depending on whose translation you pick up . . . is a Nereid, a Siren, a Vixen, a Vampire: the kind of a woman you marry without a pre-nuptial contract.
Yelena, because of her passive hollow beauty alone, destroys men's lives.
Both Astrov and Vanya come to complete arrestment when they gaze upon the disturbing destructive beauty of Yelena.
Doctor Astrov ignores his country patients, preferring furtive opportunities to look upon Yelena through the rising steam of tea from the samovar by indolent days or through the rising fumes of vodka by torpid evenings.
Vanya, who had sacrificed himself for the mere imitation of art: muscling hay into the barn and working beside the peasants, dropps his hay fork to squander his days: tormenting himself with idolatrous and adulterous lust for Yelena.
Like the sailors of yore who dashed their ships on the shoals trying to get a better look at the topless sirens--we've all been there: Santorini, Mykonos, Taormina, Positano, Pismo Beach--neither Astrov nor Vanya will stray from the home of Serebryakov for fear of interrupting their view of Yelena.
Vanya lets the hay mildew in the fields, while Astrov lets his patients moan in their sick beds.
Chekhov wrote VANYA as a comedy.
Unfortunately, Konstantin Stanislavsky of the Moscow Art Theatre saw VANYA as drama.
Chekhov's characters were "conceived in the spirit of the vaudevilles:" the play was first performed in the provinces much the way Moliere staged his: rustic and rowdy and devoid of sentimentality or pity.
Fortunately California Shakespeare remains closer to the comic spirit of Chekhov rather than the maudlin mood of Stanislavsky.
Dan Hiat (Vanya), Andy Murray (Astrov) and Howard Swain (Telegin) all provide a full measure of comedy to their characters.
If you didn't find VANYA funny, you were trying too hard to understand the absurdities of life in the Russian countryside.
Don't make the same mistake on THE CHERRY ORCHARD.
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