Author(s): Anton Chekhov

Fiction

This title is Anton Chekhov's play "Uncle Vanya" in a new version by Christopher Hampton. This version will be first staged at the Vaudeville Theatre, London, on 25 October 2012 and run until 16 February 2013. 'It's often said that the best of the Chekhov plays is the one you've seen most recently. "Uncle Vanya" doesn't have a suicide, like "The Seagull", or an adulterous couple and a duel more or less indistinguishable from murder, like "Three Sisters"; nor does it seem to announce the end of an era, like "The Cherry Orchard": all it has is a series of ludicrously bungled attempts at murder and suicide and adultery. Perhaps these failures are what makes it feel the saddest and most truthful of these great tragi-comedies, in which, possibly unique to all drama, not a single word seems redundant or out of place.' From the author's introduction.