UNCLE VANYA

Action takes place in Serebriakov's country house.

The life is flowing and sooner or later a man starts to see his lived-through years as a treasure he didn't manage to put to good use. He starts to see visions of other possible but unlived lives. In these other lives all his secret dreams come true, all his hopes are fulfilled, all his most sweet fantasies become real. The man furiously burns up the past, denies the present and gives himself totally to this other life which he could but didn't manage to live. The fuller the man understands life, the sharper he feels this gap, this contradiction which grows into a tragedy. Time goes by, and gradually you are faced with a choice - either to refuse the life completely, or to find courage to live through the life which was given to you by God and Fate and which you've been carrying out and are carrying out by yourself, with your will power and personality.
Lethally ill doctor Chekhov knew this paradox only too well and he analyzed it with amazing tenderness and desperate ruthlessness. This, as well as many other things, make Chekhov's plays and the most beautiful of them - Uncle Vanya- a simple but eternal melody with simple but eternal themes.
Lev Dodin