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MOSCOW'S
FIRST UNCLE VANYA
In 1899, Anton
Chekhov found himself in an awkward situation. The previous year, the newly
founded Moscow Art Theatre
(MXAT) had staged a tremendously successful production Chekhov's The
Seagull. After its triumph, MXAT expected to receive the rights to the
Moscow premiere of Uncle Vanya.
Chekhov, however, had already promised the play to the state-supported Maly
Theatre.
The playwright owed MXAT a great deal. Prior to its production of The
Seagull, Chekhov had endured three humiliating premieres in Moscow
and St. Petersburg. On the opening night of Ivanov
in 1887, only two of the leading actors knew their lines, and other cast
members were drunk. The Wood Demon, an early draft of
Uncle Vanya, fared no better two years later. Half the cast forgot their
lines, the actresses were dreadful, and the audience booed. If the disastrous
premieres of Ivanov
and The Wood Demon weren't enough to dissuade Chekhov from writing
again for the theatre, the calamitous 1896 premiere of The Seagull
in St. Petersburg was. The ruthless Petersburg audience howled at Chekhov's
play, taking special delight in a character's wheelchair that kept losing
its grip on the raked stage.
This series of debacles finally came to an end in 1898. After the Petersburg
flop, Chekhov was hesitant to grant anyone permission to produce his seagull,
but he eventually agreed to let Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko,
the co-founders of MXAT, stage the Moscow premiere. The production was
revolutionary. Stanislavsky and Nemirovich, who co-directed the production
as part of their first season, held twenty-six rehearsals a significant
improvement from the paltry ten rehearsals in St. Petersburg. MXAT's detailed
mise-en-scène and nuanced acting captivated Russian audiences accustomed
to melodramatic clichés. Stanislavsky's promptbook reveals the
elaborate preparation that went into the production. With its careful
orchestration of sounds and silences, the book reads more like a score
than a script.
Chekhov's Seagull took flight, and Nemirovich quickly requested
the rights to Uncle Vanya. The playwright knew he had finally found
a truly talented company to stage his works, but he was bound by his former
commitment to the Maly Theatre. If not for an attempted bowdlerization,
MXAT would probably have lost the premiere of Vanya and its growing reputation
as Chekhov's principal interpreter. A committee at the Maly objected to
the scene in which Vanya fires a gun at the Professor, criticizing the
gesture as an insult to intellectuals. The Maly demanded cuts. Chekhov
refused and promptly delivered the play to the Moscow Art Theatre.
Stanislavsky spent the summer of 1899 creating his promptbook for Vanya,
envisioning himself in the title role. Nemirovich, however, didn't see
his tall, handsome co-director as the avuncular type, and he soon persuaded
Stanislavsky to play the doctor, Astrov. Chekhov, who had loathed Stanislavsky's
performance as Trigorin in The Seagull, wanted to remove Stanislavsky
from the cast altogether. In a letter to the actress Olga Knipper, who
played Yelena, Chekhov offered the following assessment: "[Stanislavsky]
shouldn't be playing [Vanya]. That's not his métier. When
he directs then he's an artist but when he acts he's just a rich young
merchant who wants to dabble in art." The playwright finally accepted
MXAT's casting, but expressed a concern that the puritanical Stanislavsky
wouldn't exude Astrov's sexual energy. "Inject some testosterone into
him," Chekhov quipped to Nemirovich as the company began rehearsals.
At first everything
ran smoothly, but tension quickly mounted between the co-directors. Nemirovich,
who saw himself as Chekhov's representative in rehearsals, was always more
focused on the text. Stanislavsky, in contrast, was more concerned with
the visual, physical, and aural life of the production. As opening night
approached, Nemirovich wrote to Stanislavsky: "We are both aware that it
is awkward to disagree during rehearsals. It is embarrassing in front of
the actors, don't you think? ... I feel obliged to ask you for a
few concessions. Obliged by my conscience as a writer ... I don't want a
handkerchief on your head to keep off mosquitoes, it's a detail I simply
cannot take. And I can tell you for certain that Chekhov won't like it.
. . . Further. You must learn your text rock-solid. ... Not knowing
[your lines] causes you to take a slow tempo when it is not needed and to
make pauses (turning to the prompter and then seeking the mood) when they
merely deaden the role. Your second fault - the brutal way you treat props
and furniture. ... The less you move furniture around, the less often you
bang perfectly beautiful chairs, (now all our actors do it) the more attractively
and appealing your real qualities come through."
Stanislavsky did finally memorize his lines, and MXAT's production of
Uncle Vanya opened in October
of 1899. By all accounts, including Nemirovich's, Stanislavsky was magnificent
as Astrov. Aleksandr Artiom, who played the acne-ridden neighbor, Waffles,
was so successful in his role that he played it until his death in 1914.
And Stanislavsky's wife, Lilina, earned praise as Vanya's niece, Sonya.
Olga Knipper, however, expressed serious misgivings immediately after
the opening. In a letter to Chekhov, she confessed to playing Yelena "appallingly,"
placing part of the blame on Stanislavsky for making her act with too
much sexual aggression. Chekhov responded to his soon-to-be-wife sarcastically:
"Yes, dear actress, ordinary, medium success in not enough now for all
you artistic players: you want an uproar, big guns, dynamite. You have
been spoiled at last, deafened by constant talk about successes, crowded
and empty houses: you are already poisoned with that drug, and in another
two or three years you will be good for nothing!"
Though some of the stars were praised for their performances, few considered
Vanya an unqualified, immediate success. Nemirovich complained
of a languid pace on opening night - even after the troupe had cut forty
of the fifty pauses indicated in the script. The audience's initial reaction
to the production was not overly enthusiastic, and the newspapers didn't
give rave reviews. Professors from Moscow University, echoing the complaints
of the Maly Theatre, boycotted the production. Tolstoy, after seeing the
production, was rumored to have shouted, "Where is the drama? What does
it consist of?"
During the rehearsals and premiere, Chekhov was stuck in Yalta, where the doctors had exiled him in an effort to spare his tubercular lungs. He didn't see MXAT's Uncle Vanya until the spring of 1900, when the Theatre went on tour to Sevastopol and Yalta. Despite the positive notices Stanislavsky had received, Chekhov remained skeptical about his portrayal of Astrov. Before the tour, he warned Nemirovich, "Remembering [Stanislavsky's] acting for me is so depressing I can't shake it off, and in no way can believe that he is good in Uncle Vanya although everyone writes to me with one voice that he is nonetheless good and even very good." Chekhov was pleased with MXAT's work when he finally saw the production. He even complimented Stanislavsky and offered him a suggestion for Astrov's departure at the end of the play: "[Astrov] whistles. Listen, he whistles! Uncle Vanya is crying, but Astrov whistles!" Stanislavsky got no further explanation from Chekhov, but he immediately integrated the new stage direction into his performance, interpreting it, or perhaps misinterpreting it, as Astrov's loss of faith in humanity. By the time MXAT reached Chekhov in Yalta, the troupe was imploring the playwright for a new script. Debilitated by a tubercular infection that would take his life in four years and distracted by his romance with Olga Knipper, Chekhov didn't have a completed play to open MXAT's next season. But that fall, he brought the troupe Three Sisters - a play tailored for the MXAT company.
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