Translating Uncle Vanya: A Programme Note

Abstract

Sonya and her uncle Vanya live with his mother Maria on a country estate. Sonya is the daughter of Vanya's late sister Vera. He and Sonya have worked the estate for the benefit of Sonya's absent father, a college professor with a prolific output of writings on art. Retired, the professor has come to settle on the estate with his second wife Helena, many years his junior. Also living on the estate are Sonya's ageing nanny from childhood, Marina, and an impoverished former landowner now acting as an odd job man, Waffles. A frequent visitor now is Dr Astrov, the local doctor for the region, and amateur forestryman. This is the octet that realizes the play called Uncle Vanya. I use the word * octet' with its musical connotations deliberately. I have always thought of Chekhov in terms of music since I first read the Constance Garnett compendium of Chekhov short stories more than thirty years ago. Long since I decided that would have to be my Desert Island book choice, when I played that game to myself. But the musical aspect is probably even more obvious in the plays than in the stories. Uncle Vanya can be seen as an octet but not a romantic if sturdy dyingfall piece by Brahms or Tchaikovsky. Yes, if you look at it one way, but no if you look at it another. There's a bit of the old tap-dance here and there, and why does the cellist's bow tie repeatedly start to spin? More questions when I started to think about the play. Why was it called Uncle Vanya} Dr Astrov seemed a more interesting and complex character, with things to say to contemporary audiences about ecology, consciousness of the planet earth, the frequent futility of practising medicine without the many cures to be discovered only decades later. And what of Vanya's hatred for the Professor? If he was so disillusioned