LEV DODIN / MALY TEATR

UNCLE VANYA

“Thanks to you the best years of my life have been thrown down the drain.” Vanya

After the success of his The Cherry Orchard and Platonov, Lev Dodin proposes a rigorous and at the same time poetic lecture of this classic by Anton Chekhov. A staging that transmits pure theatrical pleasure through the intensive humanity of the characters, suggesting the richness of Chekhov’s writing by displaying little everyday stories.

Uncle Vanja, story of meaningless lives, illusions and dreams destined to be dissolved, of unhappy loves and silent passions of the retired professor Alexander Serebrakoff, his wife Helena, his daughter Sonia, the widow Mme Voitskaya and her son Ivan Vanya Voitski, the old nurse Marina, the doctor Michal Astroff and the impoverished landowner Ilia (Waffles) Telegin. They all revive in this moving and authentic theatre lecture of the Maly Theatre.

“In Uncle Vanja there are no metaphoric scenes, mass scenes, astonishing effects or even music. It’s most of all a very direct approach to the stage. Dodin lets the text speak, the actor meets the public in a 'tète a tète' forcing it to look into the profoundness of the human soul. The set is simple, frontal. What is left to represent? Exactly this, the total polyphony of this piece and of all its single voices. This show is not suitable for a journalistic review. It rather fits into a long novel.”
M. Davidova, Izvestia

PRODUCTION DATES
Milan, Italy, Teatro Studio, Italian Première, 4-9 November 2003
Rome, Italy, Teatro Valle, 14-17 April 2004
Palermo, Italy, Teatro Biondo, 20-25 April 2004