Uncle Vanya

 Everyone in Uncle Vanya is suffering from depression. Everyone, that is- except the old nurse, who is just getting on with her life- and looking forward to eating noodles. Astrov fights his depression by planting trees; nobody else is really trying. It's the depression- the sense of absolute meaningless, godless, hopelessness- even more than the so-called realism (which is fairly superficial) that marks this out as one of the key, prophetic and most influential texts of the modern era. Now we're no longer in the modern era does it bite as deeply?  I'm not sure it does. From the vantage point of the 21st century these people are even more exasperating than Chekhov intended them to be. 

I've been watching a filmed version of Olivier's 1963 production for the National Theatre. What a cast- Olivier, Michael Redgrave, Sybil Thorndike, Joan Plowright! I've always thought Olivier's film work was underwhelming, but here we have a record of what he was like on stage- when he wasn't deferring to the camera or having his flow chopped up by an editor- and he's bloody marvellous.