Uncle Vanya

Written by Anton Chekhov Translation by Annie Baker Directed by Christine Hamel 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 centered 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) "It is the element of might-have-been in Chekhov's characters that makes their sense of waste so tragic ...I know of no more moving climax in world drama." (Concord.com)