Russia, late summer at the close of the nineteenth century. Vanya and his niece Sonya have worked for years to manage the country estate. Into this ordered and regular household come two new visitors, Sonya's father, an irritable professor, and his young wife Elena who, in the space of a few months, cause chaos, one by their selfishness, and the other by their sexual allure. Between them, they manage to have most of the inhabitants questioning their purpose in life, their happiness and, at times, their sanity.
David Hare's version of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya opens at Theatre Royal Bath in July 2019.
Russia, late summer at the close of the nineteenth century. Vanya and his niece Sonya have worked for years to manage the country estate. Into this ordered and regular household come two new visitors, Sonya's father, an irritable professor, and his young wife Elena who, in the space of a few months, cause chaos, one by their selfishness, and the other by their sexual allure. Between them, they manage to have most of the inhabitants questioning their purpose in life, their happiness and, at times, their sanity.
David Hare's version of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya opens at Theatre Royal Bath in July 2019.
David Hare's first full-length play was produced in 1970. Since
then he has written over thirty stage plays and twenty-five
screenplays for film and television. The plays include Plenty,
Pravda (with Howard Brenton), The Secret Rapture, Racing Demon,
Skylight, Amy's View, The Blue Room, Via Dolorosa, Stuff Happens,
The Absence of War, The Judas Kiss, The Red Barn and The Moderate
Soprano. For cinema, he has written The Hours, The Reader, Damage,
Denial, Wetherby and The White Crow among others, while his
television films include Licking Hitler, the Worricker Trilogy
(Page Eight, Turks & Caicos, and Salting the Battlefield) and
Collateral. In a millennial poll of the greatest plays of the
twentieth century, five of the top hundred were his.
Anton Chekhov, Russian dramatist and short-story writer, was born
in 1860, the son of a grocer and the grandson of a serf. After
graduating in medicine from Moscow University in 1884, he began to
make his name in the theatre with the one-act comedies The Bear,
The Proposal and The Wedding. His earliest full-length plays,
Ivanov (1887) and The Wood Demon (1889), were not successful, and
The Seagull, produced in 1896, was a failure until a triumphant
revival by the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. This was followed by
Uncle Vanya (1899), Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard
(1904), shortly after the production of which Chekhov died. The
first English translations of his plays were performed within five
years of his death.
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