Arts & Manners: Samovars and Sympathy

At the turn of the century Anton Chekhov, frustrated by morose, misguided productions of his plays by the Moscow Art Theater, was insisting that there was comedy in The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard (which he called comedies), and in Uncle Vanya. No audience will doubt him watching Mike Nichols’ knowing production of Uncle Vanya now at the Circle in the Square’s Broadway theater. It is without question the best American-produced Chekhov we have had, and I commend it to you for three of the finest performances I have seen in New York this season— by Nicol Williamson, George C. Scott, and Elizabeth Wilson.

The comedy of Chekhov is the comedy of a detached ironist—too detached for me in this particular play (Gorky said Chekhov seemed “as indifferent as snow,” and Tolstoy grumbled, “Where’s the drama?”). But stage productions have seldom allowed us the chance to watch Chekhov’s subtle dilemmas and unspectacular characters with anything but heavy boredom—usually from turgid translations or self-indulgent actors trained on distorted Stanislavski, sipping at the molasses of their “emotion memories.” The Moscow Art Theater’s productions, seen during its U.S. visit in 1965, were almost as well embalmed as Lenin.

GW

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Gary Jay Williams

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At the turn of the century Anton Chekhov, frustrated by morose, misguided productions of his plays by the Moscow Art Theater, was insisting that there was comedy in The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard (which he called comedies), and in Uncle Vanya. No audience will doubt him watching Mike Nichols’ knowing production of Uncle Vanya now at the Circle in the Square’s Broadway theater. It is without question the best American-produced Chekhov we have had, and I commend it to you for three of the finest performances I have seen in New York this season— by Nicol Williamson, George C. Scott, and Elizabeth Wilson.

The comedy of Chekhov is the comedy of a detached ironist—too detached for me in this particular play (Gorky said Chekhov seemed “as indifferent as snow,” and Tolstoy grumbled, “Where’s the drama?”). But stage productions have seldom allowed us the chance to watch Chekhov’s subtle dilemmas and unspectacular characters with anything but heavy boredom—usually from turgid translations or self-indulgent actors trained on distorted Stanislavski, sipping at the molasses of their “emotion memories.” The Moscow Art Theater’s productions, seen during its U.S. visit in 1965, were almost as well embalmed as Lenin.