Anton Chekhov

Similarly, of the old women, Marina is of the earth earthy, stationary in her obedience to the natural cycle, her life narrowly focussed on barnyard and kitchen; still, she is capable of shrewd comment on human behaviour. Mariya Vasilievna is equally static and narrow, but her eyes never rise from the pages of a pamphlet; she is totally blind to what goes on inside her fellow men. Her reading and Marina's knitting are both palliatives. One, meant for the betterment of all mankind, is sterile; the other, meant for the comfort of specific individuals, is not.

The contrasts are more complex but just as vivid in the younger characters. Sonya and Yelena are both unhappy young women on the threshold of wasted lives; both are tentative and withdrawn in matters of the heart. Sonya, however, is straightforward, less willing to indulge her daydreams, more eager to drug herself with work. Yelena manages to be both indolent and clumsily manipulative in her dealings with others; she declares her affinity to Vanya because they are both 'exasperating' people.

Astrov and Vanya are the only two 'educated persons in the district', who started, like Platonov and Ivanov, with exceptional promise, but grew disillusioned. Astrov's disil­lusionment was gradual, over years of drudgery as a rural doctor; he has turned into a toper and a cynic, but can still compartmentalise the vestiges of his idealism in his refores­tation projects. Vanya's disillusionment came as a thun­derclap with the Professor's arrival; its suddenness negated any possibility of maintaining an ideal. Instead, he is diverted to absurd fantasies of bedding down Yelena and, even at a moment of crisis, of thinking himself a potential Dostoevsky or Schopenhauer. His impossible dreams are regularly deflated by Astrov's sarcasm, but both men are, to use a word repeated throughout the play, 'crackpots' ('chudakV).

Thus, the propinquity of the characters brings out their salient features; the existence of each puts the other in relief. As in The Seagull, they have been collected by Chekhov on an estate where they are displaced persons. We are told it has been in the family for little more than a generation. Vanya relinquished his patrimony to provide his sister's dowry, gave up his own career to cut expenses and work the estate on the Professor's behalf, taking his mother with him: they are acclimatised without being naturalised. The Professor and Yelena are obvious intrud­ers, who disrupt the estate's settled rhythms and cannot accommodate themselves to it. Even Astrov seldom pays a call; he prefers his forests. Only Sonya, Marina and Waffles are rooted in the estate's soil.

Again, the physical progression of the stage setting emblematises the inner development of the action. The play begins outside the house, with a tea-table elaborately set to greet the Professor, who, on his entrance, walks right past it to closet himself in his study. The eruption of appurtenances of gentility into a natural setting vividly suggests the upheaval caused by the Petersburgers' pres­ence. Moreover, the samovar has gone cold during the long wait; it fails to serve its purpose. As is usual with Chekhov the play begins with a couple of characters on stage, waiting for the others to precipitate an event. But when it comes, the event - the tea-party - is frustrated.

The second act moves indoors, its sense of claus­trophobia enhanced by the impending storm and Yelena's need to throw open the window. The dining-room too has been usurped by the Professor, who has turned it into a study cum sickroom, his medicine littering the sideboard. No family gathers to share a meal: midnight snacks, a clandestine glass of wine, tete-a-tetes rather than group encounters are standard. Nanny, who has already grum­bled at the altered meal-times, complains that the samovar has still not been cleared. Later she will rejoice that plain noodles have returned in place of the Professor's spicy curries.

In Act Three, the Professor thrusts the family into unfamiliar surroundings when he convenes them in a rarely used reception room. (In the Art Theatre production, the furniture was swathed in dust-covers and the chandelier hung in its bag like a huge teardrop.) Cold, formal, empty, it suits the Professor's taste for his missing podium and further disorients the others. Nanny, cowed by the ambi­ence, must be asked to sit down; for the sake of the occasion, she was prepared to stand at the door like a good servant. Anyone can wander through, like Vanya who intrudes upon Astrov and Yelena with his bunch of roses, another property rendered useless by circumstance.