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    Uncle Vanya
    Uncle Vanya
    Uncle Vanya
    Audiobook2 hours

    Uncle Vanya

    Written by Anton Chekhov

    Narrated by Josh Radnor, Stacy Keach and Martin Jarvis

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    In this classic of Chekhov’s canon, an overbearing professor pays a visit to his country estate, where Sonya and Vanya, his daughter and former brother-in-law, have slaved to maintain his wealth. But Vanya is enchanted by the professor’s new wife, while Sonya has fallen for the town’s melancholy doctor.

    Includes a conversation with Rosamund Bartlett, author of “Chekhov: Scenes from a Life.”

    Recorded in Los Angeles before a live audience at the UCLA James Bridges Theater in October 2013.

    Director: Rosalind Ayres
    Producing Director: Susan Albert Loewenberg
    An L.A. Theatre Works Full-Cast Performance Featuring:
    Jennifer Bassey as Mariya
    JD Cullum as Telegin
    Holley Fain as Yelena
    Martin Jarvis as Professor Serebryakov
    Stacy Keach as Vanya
    Anna Mathias as Marina
    Josh Radnor as Astrov
    Devon Sorvari as Sonya
    Associate Producers: Christina Montaño, Anna Lyse Erikson
    Recording Engineer/Sound Designer/Mixer: Mark Holden for The Invisible Studios, West Hollywood
    Sound Effects Artist: Sam Boeck
    Stage Manager: Tori Burnett
    Editor: Wes Dewberry
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherL.A. Theatre Works
    Release dateJan 30, 2014
    ISBN9781580819473
    Author

    Anton Chekhov

    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) was a Russian doctor, playwright, and author. His best known works include the plays The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1900), and The Cherry Orchard (1904), and the short stories “The Lady with the Dog,” “Peasants,” and “The Darling.” One of the most influential and widely anthologized writers in Russian history, Chekhov spent most of his career as a practicing physician and devoted much of his energy to treating the poor, free of charge. He died of tuberculosis in 1904.  

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    Reviews for Uncle Vanya

    4/5

    295 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A classic work of angst and despair, set in pre-revolutionary Russia. This is a play in four acts, and one of Chekov's most famous. It is a tale of mediocrity, and the pains of mediocrity in people who know they were not born to be mediocre. An extended family is thrown together for a summer, and seething resentments gradually bubble to the surface and threaten to destroy the title character, a man brought down by his own character flaws, but unable to recognize that, and attributing it to the whims of others. This play would probably not make it through a modern theatre workshop; it is filled with long expository speeches, and you go for quite a while without knowing what the stakes are, and never quite figure out who the antagonist and protagonist is, because the characters seem to change roles throughout the course of the play. Still, it can speak to a modern audience, if they will allow themselves to slow down to a pace unknown in our modern world, and move with the characters through their lazy days.
    • 4/5
      Even the Russians have problems...I enjoyed this play immensely, although some of the relations were hard to keep track of. The characters were strongly written, and everything flowed really well.
    • 5/5
      It was a real life drama being produced on a stage and it was great
    • 4/5
      Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov; Kindle; play; (3 1/2*)I think that perhaps Chekhov may be an acquired taste and I am not truly there yet. And though I enjoyed this play I got lost within the characters at times.In a world full of whining and complaining about insignificant things it's fun to admire Chekhov and his ability to make this seem imperative to human life. While in the setting of Russian gentry everything is falling apart and the lives of the characters are no more gratifying than anyone the lives of anyone else.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic! One of the best recordings from LA Theatre Works. Amazingly clear and concise translation from David Mamet. Beautiful performances from Keach and the whole cast. Goes by like a breeze. Highly recommend.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I read while listening to the Librivox full cast recording, which I will recommend. I found having different people reading the different parts (plus their intonations at certain times) really helped me keep track of who was who.

      This play struck me as having a lot going on even through it is mostly talk rather than action. Vanya (Ivan) has been caring for his niece Sonia's estate after his sister died; now, his (former?) brother-in-law & his second wife Helena are visiting. Helena exerts a disruptive influence on all the male characters which irresistably reminded me of Helen of Troy.

      I was struck by how modern some of the ideas expressed were. One example of this is the doctor's ideas about forests - his thoughts about deforestation and climate could have been spoken by someone today. I hadn't realized that these ideas existed in the late 1800s when Chekhov wrote this play!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      First saw this at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, nearly five decades ago (1969)--before I had read it in translation or (parts) in Russian. (The title, Дядя Ваня can be understood after two weeks of Russian.) The Guthrie had the tone just right--a comedy with a sad ending? Rather like so many Shakespeare tragedies with (somewhat) happy endings-- RIII,even MacBeth. Back then it was rare to see Checkov anything but dreary, quasi-tragic, similar to Ibsen. Тогда это было редко видеть Checkov ничего, кроме тоскливой, квази-трагический, похожий на Ибсена.
      Dr. Astrov's resounding support for the forest resounded with me, whose family has lived in New England since 1661, and who grew up summers in Maine on 40 acres of field and forest, the nearest inhabited farm a mile away. Astrov might appall modern pretend conservationists paid to manage forests but who sell off the oak to create better hunting. (Even Brazilians who strip rainforest don't pretend they're land protectionists.)
      Amazing how telling, how contemporary, land issues here and in the Cherry Orchard are. Of course, land was always a plague in Russia: anybody might own huge property, and not be rich. Wealth required owning the peasants to work tracts, мужики. Gogol's Chichikov discovers a tax loophole which can make him appear rich (thus marriageable), by buying dead people still on the lists. Amusing throughout. Hilarious when one sentimental landowner ironically named Bitch-son, собакевич, refuses to sell his former carriage-repairmen (?).
      I suppose trees are the modern tax-roll "souls": valuable when dead, as pretend conservationists know.
    • 4/5
      I related to this at at least nine broadly related points (the wasted life, the tragic ridiculousness of the old man who can't catch up with the fact that old he is, the feeling of universal decline emerging from one's own decline, how watching other people laugh and cry makes you laugh and cry for maybe motor neuron reasons, how very very hard it is to walk away from someone you KNOW is gonna kiss you for the second time ever, how sad it is to be smart and unaccomplished and peevish, how it's all a fuckin dumb waste man, etc., etc.), and yet it still didn't really compare to Three Sisters on any level really for me, showing the superiority of art over life I guess.
    • 1/5
      I read this for a LAMDA exam, and to be honest the reason I did not enjoy it was probably due to the amount of times I had to go through one scene, but it's put me off of reading any more Chekov =/
    • 4/5
      A classic work of angst and despair, set in pre-revolutionary Russia. This is a play in four acts, and one of Chekov's most famous. It is a tale of mediocrity, and the pains of mediocrity in people who know they were not born to be mediocre. An extended family is thrown together for a summer, and seething resentments gradually bubble to the surface and threaten to destroy the title character, a man brought down by his own character flaws, but unable to recognize that, and attributing it to the whims of others. This play would probably not make it through a modern theatre workshop; it is filled with long expository speeches, and you go for quite a while without knowing what the stakes are, and never quite figure out who the antagonist and protagonist is, because the characters seem to change roles throughout the course of the play. Still, it can speak to a modern audience, if they will allow themselves to slow down to a pace unknown in our modern world, and move with the characters through their lazy days.
    • 4/5
      I found this drama to be quite dark. The setting, rural Russia in the late 1800s, was interesting. I believe Chekhov was trying to make a statement not just about the rural wealthy, but about humanity in general. He describes a degeneration of the relationship between man and nature, an indolent, ignorant oblivion, which destructs without replacing. A very dark drama.