Words that speak to our fear but give us wisdom to draw on
Sonya’s speech – Uncle Vanya (Anton Chekhov, 1898)
At the start of his influential 1968 book The Empty Space, the director Peter Brook declared that an act of theatre can happen almost anywhere. All that’s needed is for someone to walk across an improvised “stage” and someone else to watch. It remains a useful sine qua
non proposition, yet isn’t it what’s said on stage, and the way it’s said, that most prompts us to laughter, tears, outrage and every other emotion under the sun? The dumbshow in
Hamlet has its merits, but the play’s status owes infinitely more to its soliloquies.
Over the coming weeks, I intend to celebrate the joy of text, alighting on some of the finest speeches in world drama and consider what makes them special.
After the fortnight we’ve just had, one speech at the end of a play that heralds the beginning of 20th-century drama leapt out at me: the closing lines of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1898).
The context
The play’s title is explained by reference to its heroine – Sonya, the daughter of a decrepit professor of arts called Serebryakov who has married again after her mother’s death, to the young, beautiful, listless Yelena. The couple’s arrival on Serebryakov’s country estate, diligently maintained for thankless years by Sonya and her mother’s brother Vanya, causes emotional upheaval. Vanya, along with Astrov, a doctor and keen environmentalist (as was Chekhov), both fall for Yelena, leaving Sonya, smitten with Astrov, disappointed in love. Vanya explodes in futile rage at Serebryakov’s selfish proposal to sell the estate to support his retirement. After an abortive attempt to shoot his perceived nemesis, a broken Vanya watches the couple leave for Kharkov and returns to his labours, confronting his failures. Sonya consoles him.
What’s in the speech?
Sonya advocates the need to soldier on, keep working, endure. To quote Michael Frayn’s superb 1988 translation: “We shall live out the long, long succession of days and endless evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials we’re sent… and when our time comes we shall die with resignation.” Better times await: they will hear the angels, see “the sky all dressed in diamonds”. Mercy will flood the world and “our life will become as quiet and gentle and sweet as a caress”. Her final, rallying words: “We will rest!”
Why is it so powerful?
The critic Michael Billington, extolling that production in the West End (Michael Gambon was Vanya, Imelda
Staunton Sonya, Michael Blakemore directed) wrote: “I know of no more moving climax in world drama.” When done well it’s not just Vanya who weeps. Through an act of will, the thing that has most afflicted them – drudgery – can be embraced. The (religious) reward is loaded with paradox: in death they will find rest, and new life. Whether or not you believe in God, it’s bleak yet the repeated phrases (“We shall rest!”, “I have faith”) have a persuasive force of uplift, tolling like a bell. Chekhov reinvented the dramatic climax after The Seagull, which erred towards the melodramatic. Here, a scene of humdrum, confined domesticity acquires a vast metaphysical reach with universal implications.
In performance
Uncle Vanya is regularly revived, but mention is still rightly made of a landmark 1962 Chichester production starring Michael Redgrave as Vanya, with Laurence Olivier as Astrov and (his new wife) Joan Plowright as Sonya. Captured on film, Plowright is quietly devastating, adopting a bustling air of purpose, hands clasped, but those big dark eyes well up, and her voice tellingly wavers.
Some have found Sonya’s sentiments too meek. The risk is of an overcompensating quality of fierce declamation. The production by Rimas Tuminas for the Russian company Vakhtangov (seen in the West End in 2012) saw Sonya stand on her work-desk, eyes streaming, fists clenched, the image of gritted determination. It was very striking indeed, but I far preferred the
unforced radiance of Aimee Lou Wood in the recent (alas Covidcurtailed) West End production by Ian Rickson.
Why it matters now
Much afflicted by tuberculosis (to which he finally succumbed in 1904), Chekhov, who saw himself as doctor first, playwright second, understood the brevity of life, saw sickness and epidemics at close hand (the play references a typhus outbreak at its start), ministered gratis to the poor.
Uncle Vanya speaks to our present moment of mortal fear and wretched state of lockdown.
“Works like Chekhov’s outlive the generations of men” wrote the great Stanislavski (Astrov in the original Moscow Art Theatre production, his wife Maria Lilina playing Sonya). In Sonya’s simple affirmation of solidarity, vision of human life and reverie of the eternal lies a tincture of deep understanding we can all draw on.
A scene of humdrum, confined domesticity acquires a vast metaphysical reach