Uncle Vanya – getting out …

Though I am in London detox mode and not feeling that great right now, I didn’t really get out of Chekhov yet.

(In a way, London is the only place in the world that works like a drug on me because it is the only place where I feel that I belong, and where I actually feel NORMAL. And, without any comprehensible reason, it has always been like this. The only place in the world where I walk the streets and don’t get instantly pissed off about everything: the traffic, the ugliness, the people, the stupid shops …  And the West End has always been my favourite place in the world anyway, though I have been there only a few times. And I had almost forgotten! Of course this is where I want to be – surrounded by theatres and cinemas. The British Museum always just a few streets away, and the great bookshops! AND I heard a concert at St. Martin in the Fields which I could never make before! I thought the South Bank was my favourite place in London, probably because I see it so often in films and series, but I was wrong. And I dislike Kensington and don’t care much about the City. - I found instant “substitution” though – accidentally! – watching “Ashes to Ashes” - London in the Eighties: definitely the place to be, though it feels like some particularly ugly alien planet - and a more recent film called “Enemies – Welcome to the Punch!” Even though the story is what we already know - men running about with guns, shooting a lot and saying little, whereas women are dying -  it is a toxically beautiful film that is set in the Docklands - which I saw for the first time coming from City Airport. There is a scene that is just incredible - where a huge container yard is filmed from above with somebody wandering about with a flashlight … and similar stuff. And James McAvoy and Mark Strong are simply a pleasure to watch – just these FACES!!! So, about things to look forward to: I have a ticket for the “Cinema” for James McAvoy as Cyrano – which Claudia saw in London and said that it had been “mind-boggling”. So: I’ll hang on, only one week … !!! But how come that I am listening to this right now: “Now the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse …”???  😭😭😭!!! )

But, as I have developed a tenacity about these things that I cannot help finding a bit ridiculous – after all, I don’t do this for a living! – I just noticed that I was not yet through with Chekhov. And that I did “it” again: exactly what I did at the beginning of my reading which instantly became intense and strangely satisfying – but I had to GET OUT! Almost as soon as I started reading, I had to get out again … Now I have done it a few times, and the last time, seeing “Uncle Vanya” in the theatre, it became loads more intense and satisfying, but I DEFINITELY have to get out. It was basically already when I read the first lines of “Uncle Vanya” for the first time when I noticed that THIS was more personal than it usually gets. That it is about ME, and about “us” = all the people I share this feeling with about what is wrong with our lives, these “crossroads” where we have arrived, this LIFE we have got ourselves into without really realizing it, this MOMENT in time, right here, right now - where Greta Thunberg could say that we HAVE to admit that we are FAILING and where so many people suddenly feel the same. This strange perception of simultaneity that I developed reading Chekhov - and which became so acute and urgent watching it in the theatre, where I could SEE that other people had felt the same …

It kind of happened, in “Shakespeare” or elsewhere, but never like this. So, WHAT WAS IT?

I think I am closer now than I was, as I met with Claudia after she came back from London, and when – as a first stage of detox - we met for breakfast. Of course we talked about “Uncle Vanya” again, and it became suddenly intense when we debated what had been going on between Dr Astrov and Sonya. We probably were rather in sync about everything else. But only afterwards I realized that she had asked the right question – the question I had always been looking for:

WHY is there no hope?

I personally don’t really feel – we both didn’t! – that there actually IS no hope. There is always hope, especially WHEN there is nothing else … but, like surprises, this hope is never what we think it would be. I elaborated on my “collarbone feeling” and discovered that something had kind of “sunk in” that had always been right beside me, looking at me, patiently waiting until I would come round to facing it … So much of my reading feels like growing into something more mature and substantial, though – in this case - nothing that makes me feel better. Nonetheless it felt good to be able to look it in the eye. I think it was finally FACING the sentence: IT IS TOO LATE! – which Dr Astrov says but which kind of relates to everybody on that stage except Sonya. She is too young for her life to be killed in the bud – an acute kind of agony which nobody in the audience could have failed to understand. But – what I also find so special about Chekhov – even though NONE of them appears to get anything they want or finds anything decisive to make their lives better – it is always so obvious that life will be GOING ON. And Sonya is the one whom I instantly felt had a great recipe for hope when there IS no hope of anything getting better: WORK. At the end, she expresses this belief that doing good is an end in itself and will be rewarded. Now, I am almost forty years older than she is, and I don’t really BELIEVE in a reward anymore, but I was so surprised when I realized how much I ACT UPON this belief.

Now, this is rather weird, I know that. I just listened to the radio interview Toby Jones and Richard Armitage gave on BBC 2 about “Uncle Vanya”. That is, very little of it actually was about “Uncle Vanya”, but there was this bit where Richard Armitage said that, at bad times in his life, he actually referred to this play and read Sonya’s speech to remind himself. And he said EXACTLY what I thought when I read it: “What would we be without our work? Nothing.”

WHAT!!!??? When I hear somebody speaking my own thoughts I always think that there must be something wrong with my hearing. (Though, in my case, it must mean something infinitely less emphatic. But I wake up every morning, glad that all my petty construction sites are still here, and that I am still here to try and do my best on them. And know that, if anything, THIS will see me through when the bad times will come again.) It is not even that these thoughts are so special. I am sure that there are lots and lots of people who feel exactly the same – I even know a few, and these are the people I genuinely respect – but I never knew anyone who would feel that they could SAY this. I couldn’t have said it – though NOW I can! What I mean, I suppose, is that there are extremely few people in whom what they feel, what they think, what they want to say, and what they actually say is exactly THE SAME. I know that this is what I want to be more than anything, always wanted to be, and what I am actually trying to be, but I never feel that I am coming that close. Probably nobody does, but, as it is with ideals, there is a good reason for their existence. As this is MY ideal of what a human being should be like, I understand it better now why I have such a categorical problem dealing with people who are lying to themselves. They make it impossible FOR ME to be who I really am.

However weird this might be, I just discovered the REASON why I trust Richard Armitage in this way, and always have. (Actually from the first moment I saw him as a dwarf and thought: THIS is it! This is exactly how I am feeling about them.) Why I always believe him when he is playing – MORE than I believe myself and what I have read. (Basically, he uses the same kind of "bullsthit detector" that I use, he is just better at using it.) In “Chekhov” this was the reason why I could be brought to taking “It is too late!” as seriously as it needs to be taken. The sentence actually gets SAID rather late in the play, if I remember this correctly, but it is what he was PLAYING from the beginning. (Though, right at the beginning, he was actually just playing it.) So, this is what my “collarbone feeling” had been about: that I BELIEVED Dr Astrov that it was too late FOR HIM. That the state he is in is already too serious. We both – and I think Richard Armitage as well - diagnosed it as “burnout”. But – even though I cannot really imagine what it is like – I can see that an alarming amount of people are dealing with it, and that it means that serious and lasting damage to someone’s mental state has already been done. There certainly is a cure, but it is not something that other people can give, it is about how people can make themselves feel about themselves. (Sex would be great, I think, like everything that gets us to focus on ourselves in the here and now and makes us feel better, but this whole other human being attached to it would be way too much to deal with - let alone marriage!) And the greatest illusion is probably that people after therapy can go back to what they WERE before all this happened to them … I am rather certain that marriage with Dr Astrov would have been good for SONYA – the more so as she is uncommonly well prepared - for her age! - to put up with any hardship and disappointment. Even under normal circumstances there is no way that he would ever stop drinking and chasing skirt. I don’t think that Chekhov – and Richard Armitage - could have made this more obvious. But there are these windows of opportunity in our lives, and, sometimes without us ever noticing them, they are suddenly closing. And I obviously had no difficulty following Richard Armitage in his analysis that Dr Astrov’s window for a “normal” life and state of happiness had been closed for good. For me, without a measure of doubt, he was taking what Chekhov has written literally:  that there might have been a window of opportunity where he would have considered to marry Sonya, but not anymore. It is tough to think of it in this way - as it SHOULD be. But that I took this self-assessment as a given fact is the reason that, when Claudia described the benefits this marriage would have held for Dr Astrov, I couldn’t ARGUE with it, but my collarbones were screaming: NO!!!

In fact, it couldn’t have been difficult for me to understand because, in my life, the window of opportunity in which I believed that marriage and babies would make me happy has been extremely short, though – trying to be entirely sincere – I have to admit that it WAS there. It has nothing to do with the fact that Dr Astrov is almost forty, but that we have to believe him when he says that he is sick of THIS life! – and, however different the meaning for both of us, I was completely in sync with him. Or AM, as long as I can afford to stay in “Chekhov”. THERE IS NO HOPE - and I have finally to come to terms with what this MEANS.

Uncle Vanya – homo sapiens has not YET failed!

We have to admit that we are failing. But homo sapiens has not yet failed. (Greta Thunberg)

Best moments (and worst!)

My single favourite moment of the whole play was actually just a MOMENT – which I remember to have read and liked but so suddenly understood in its caustic irony that I made a loud noise. It was the moment when Professor Serebryakov announces that he might write a treatise about how people should live their lives. What!!!??? How can anybody SEE all these people in their utter misery and not want to cry but sit down and write a treatise???

Which is what I am doing right now – ummmh??? But it is not my intention to write a treatise, it is just the only thing I can do “about it”. I HAVE to write so as not to lose some of my favourite theatre moments ever. I remember that I panicked a bit because, immediately after the show, I was looking for my favourite moment when I READ the play, which I knew I had seen and found that it played out as I had imagined – just infinitely better. And I couldn’t remember what it was! (Of course I found it again …)

I certainly loved THIS moment because it turned out to be so analytic – but the kind of analysis I only find in the theatre and very rarely in films. That I suddenly feel as if I understand everything because understanding feels like barfing my guts. Therefore explaining WHAT I understood isn’t really the point, but the moment certainly contained this synopsis of what I had seen. At least as long as I was in the theatre, I totally was with Chekhov in his analysis about what it entails to be human and alive, how we talk about everything and realize nothing … And even that - to maybe find out how we should live? - we need to understand UNHAPPINESS.

This time I won’t proceed from worst to best but roughly in order of the performance. But first I need to take up a basic issue about the text. I already wrote that “rewriting” the play proved to be a good thing. Not that I understood all the changes I noticed, or approved of them. More often than once I felt as if the text had lost its bite, but it was mostly compensated by the feeling that the actors played “it” anyway. Most of what wasn’t explicit anymore just became part of the big SUBTEXT that I felt to be about ninety percent of this play. For example, they skipped most of the great self-analysis where Dr Astrov is concerned. Therefore some of my favourite bits of this character were sacrificed, as him saying explicitly that he cannot love anymore, or – when he is speaking to Sonya (!) about Yelena: “But that wouldn’t be love, would it?” Or – talking with Yelena about Sonya - that there would have been a time when he might have considered it (= marrying her), but not anymore. In this production he just says that he cannot FEEL anything anymore and – impatiently: “It is too LATE!” And that says it all! - I was sorry to lose the self-analysis, especially in the beginning, but I also noticed that self-analysis is already a big step BEYOND suffering and was easily convinced that it would have felt wrong to dwell on it. To concentrate on the SUFFERING AND DESPAIR proved so much more efficient.

There were other bits I missed, painfully even, but the general direction into which the text had been developed was so right because it was cleansed of everything that would have made it cumbersome and intricate and purely intellectual, so that the actors had a text where feelings might “run” smoothly. This straightforwardness and “permeability” was taken up in the stage setting – which was simple and practical, but beautiful and poetic with the light and the big glass screen through which we could see the TREES outside. Most important, it didn’t contain anything to remind us that this was Chekhov (= 19^th century!). And this was also the most important thing about the text: that it was developed in a direction that made it feel entirely CONTEMPORARY. This is probably the single most important and best thing to be said about the production: that it FELT so naturally timeless - without any obvious “updates”! - that “we” never perceive that historic screen between us and the characters but have this immediate access and communication with OUR OWN feelings.

My worst moment I have fortunately already dealt with. It was the first “scene” (there are no “scenes”, so rather first entry of the first act) – until the moment Vanya awakes from his nap and immediately starts bitching. Then we finally get a bit of entertainment. It cannot have been REMOTELY as long as I remember it … 😞 As I already wrote: I got over it, but, for the time being, I was really relieved to have somebody else to look at.

I remember now that I wasn’t that happy with Vanya in the beginning. I enjoyed the bitching but didn’t fully understand it yet, and only looking back I can appreciate how efficiently Toby Jones set me right about his character. In my book of literary prejudices Vanya already had an entry before I even started reading – basically as a PATHETIC character. Somebody not to be taken too seriously. And - even though I thought I had! - I hadn’t really rewritten that entry. So, Toby Jones took that off my hands – otherwise the play wouldn’t have worked! – In fact, if I don’t take somebody too seriously I don’t really LISTEN to them, and – one thing I already noticed when I realized he would play Vanya - Toby Jones is one of these actors who always makes me look, and listen. And when I am really listening I immediately get the impression that Vanya is really intelligent – so, that he might have been a Dostoevsky or what not is not ENTIRELY a hyperbole! He can also be genuinely funny, and - as I found later, mostly in his exchange with Yelena - he is compassionate and socially competent. And all this is really important to pick up for this play to work because it is essential that his pathetic behaviour in the third act is not an expression of who he is but of his acute suffering and despair – and the lack of means to express himself “appropriately”. Quite like the bitching – that gets GENUINELY annoying, not just for the characters on the stage! – must be understood as self-preservation and pain management. Even if we decide that Vanya is a disagreeable person, we CANNOT fail to understand why.

Here is a good place to remember the two “big” moments of Telegin – which actually became more of a favourite than I would have thought because they were so surprising. Yes, there were two! Almost right at the beginning when he stands up for himself in front of Yelena – who cannot even remember his name though she sees him every day – and then the one where he is telling the story of his life. I liked them so much because they are such a great example of how infinitely deeper Connor McPherson understood Chekhov than I did – even though I had already been on the right track. Checkhov took kindness and compassion – as a tribute to EVERY proper human being – REALLY seriously.

In fact, I realize now that almost the whole play consists of favourite moments! (Which is already enough to justify my compulsive writing! 😉) One of my favourite features was the way Vanya and Yelena connected. It is tragic, but they COULD have been really comfortable with each other – and a comfort to each other – if Vanya didn’t desire her. I think HE offers her genuine compassion and friendship, and partially grants her relief from the inhuman boredom. And she appreciates it and is grateful for it – until he oversteps a boundary. Then she resolutely pushes him back, and he knows anyway that he will never get what he wants. Nonetheless SHE is bound to make him suffer - without intending to! – and HE annoys and vexes her. It is genuinely sad because there is such potential of kindness and understanding in their relationship that can only come out when it is played. They could be so comfortable with each other, and make one another’s lives better – except they CAN’T!

There is an easy transition here to my absolute favourite “scene” because the same dynamics are played out there between Dr Astrov and Sonya condensed into one brief moment. It is so beautiful because it is something that occurs ACCIDENTIALLY, as naturally as these moments occur in real life – and turns out as elusive.  In fact, I had Chekhov down as “master of the elusive”, but I didn’t really know what I meant until I saw this.  Another one of these moments where the actors played purely “subtext”. It might as well have been my most beautiful single theatre moment ever. It certainly was the saddest. There is a moment where both their feelings are completely laid open to each other. There IS intense communication, but the meaning of it is completely different for both of them because, as Sonya is in love with him, HER feelings are entirely about him – whereas the feelings she awakes in him are entirely about him as well. Which doesn’t mean that he is not infinitely grateful for the relief he gets, but it is not “personal”. It is kind of painful to see how just taking the edge off suffering can be such a big thing. As I read it, this scene is sufficient to explain that they could never have been an item. In my opinion, it is so sad because – if Sonya didn’t desire him so much, and if he, deep down, wasn’t such a macho arsehole - they COULD have been such good FRIENDS! With all their boundedness and imperfections they are both such substantial and genuinely beautiful human beings, and COULD have helped one another infinitely to make their lives better.

There is a transition again to the second worst moment … Good news is: there were actually only TWO, the rest was infinitely good. (I think with the exception of the nightly scene with Professor Serebryakov that turned out a bit lame, but this wasn’t really that important.) It was the moment where Dr Astrov says that a woman can only be a man’s friend AFTER she has been his mistress. (👎👎👎!!!) I think I cannot be much mistaken about the fact that Richard Armitage liked it as little as I did and wasn’t entirely sure about how to play this – to his credit! But it is a compliment to the validity of the decisions the director had taken that this stood out like a sore spot. Nonetheless I grudgingly approved of the decision not to sacrifice it because – especially in correspondence with the “male bonding scene” later -  it is so constructive to what happens between men and women – or doesn’t happen, for example between Sonya and Dr Astrov. It is just that it is such a 19^th century way of looking at something that is STILL there in the relationships between the sexes – if we like it or not! – and will be in the foreseeable future as it has probably been the same since we were cavemen (or – women).

I loved the male bonding – immediately followed by the female bonding between Yelena and Sonya. (Like almost everybody they HAVE a relationship that is not without potential, but they also have a serious issue – which, in this case, gets settled entirely!) I realize that I loved it because they took this opportunity to bring out the division of the world in male and female – the “beauty” of it as well as the way it becomes a source of (needless) suffering. And here is the slot for the million pound question why men always think that attractive women are trying to ensnare them. I know it is really difficult (for women!) to take this seriously, but please take a deep breath and try because it is important! Men actually CANNOT HELP thinking this because it is exactly what HAPPENS to them when they see an attractive woman. She doesn’t really have to DO anything – and this was the thing I loved most about Rosalind Eleazar’s mature acting: that she made it so abundantly clear that Yelena DOESN’T do anything. And, as I had been so curious about how it would play out on the stage that Dr Astrov suddenly proposes sex to her, I watched closely what is going on between these two people beforehand – and was delighted. Richard Armitage playing subtext was a sight for sore eyes!

The great thing is that, in this case, I have actual proof that “men” probably wouldn’t agree with me here. The only review about the play I have read because it was linked by “London Theatre” was written by a man. (And it reminded me why I am not in the habit of reading reviews. The only awake wrong expectations and cause irritation – even when they are good, which this one was. My own eyes and ears, and feelings, are just such an infinitely better instrument FOR ME to assess what is actually going on on the stage.)  And he wrote that Yelena is “madly in love” with Astrov. Sorry but – bollocks!!! I do this very seldom because I don’t feel my authority AS A WOMAN to be that great, but in this case it cannot be helped. Clearly: male projection! The actress was so totally clear about everything Yelena is feeling – which I admired particulary because she didn’t DO much. And there is no indication – ever! - of Yelena being in LOVE with Dr Astrov - as there isn’t in the text either! - though she certainly finds him fascinating. And of course she would want to sleep with him! But that wouldn’t be love, would it?

Oh! I like it how I have managed to “turn” this – or rather how THEY did, making this play feel so much more contemporary in an unobtrusive way than could ever be achieved by any obvious “uptdates”. Waking this morning, I remembered with pleasure the beautiful stage setting – and how “contextual” it had been. It was not really a ROOM where people belong in and are kind of stuck – as I unconsciously thought it had to be like in Chekhov. But I was wrong. It was more like a state of being that everybody shares – or rather everybody who is still alive: transitional, slightly messy and kind of OPEN. A space that invites us to put OUR OWN categories into question. In fact, all this proves that “Chekhov” ACTUALLY has done something to the human stuff within me, that it actually got refined and shifted about a bit. And this is an amazing thing to observe! I did before, but never so explicitly, and it is something that especially THEATRE does to me so that it is not quite the same as my other fictional experiences. I noticed before that I cannot distance myself from the text in the same way, and this time I noticed that this is because I don’t WANT to. I actually enjoy it when they are messing with me – take my own thoughts and feelings so seriously, and even set me straight in this way. Amazing …

In fact, I never minded their setting me straight, especially not in this case. The toughest moment for me reading it had been when Dr Astrov proposes sex to Yelena in a way that I found offensive. That was my moment of thinking: “What an arsehole!” (Which is something "we" don't WANT to think - especially women!) For Claudia it was another moment, but we both ultimately came to this conclusion – which, if I am not much mistaken, a man would never have come to. And, AFTER I had seen it, I felt differently myself – which came up in our discussion when I always said: “Yes, but I can understand HIM as well …” One reason for this was that I felt more lenient when I realized that Yelena doesn’t get hurt BECAUSE of his insensitive behaviour. As she is so resilient and competent in dealing with men, it doesn’t even put her in an awkward and disagreeable position. Nonetheless, he hurts her UNCONSIOUSLY – a lot! - by opening the wound of her own hopelessly misery.

And THIS was the single best thing about this production for me. As they clearly took up every opportunity of showing how everybody hurts everybody else, taking great care at the same time not to expose anybody as an “arsehole”, they so clearly brought it out that “we” mostly don’t hurt others intentionally  - because we sadistically enjoy it to lash out at other people - but unintentionally because of OUR OWN inadequacies, our own boundedness, our own misery. We CANNOT HELP hurting one another, and this will always be so, as long as we are still alive and suffering ourselves.

That grates because I have actually become compulsive about AVOIDING to make other people feel bad, always being so careful and polite and accommodating so that they wouldn’t be tempted to make me suffer in return. So - even though I am feeling very much alive a the moment - in Chekhov’s book I might already be dead? Well, dealing with something like this, at least I am picking up signs of life. Yesterday, discussing the show with Claudia another time, I noticed something very strange. When we took up the issue again yesterday if marriage with Sonya would have been a way out of his misery for Dr Astrov, she explained patiently what she meant, and I just thought: I can’t ARGUE with that! But all this time there was this FEELING contradicting her so strongly which I felt DISTINCTLY as some kind of pressure right beneath my COLLARBONES! Never noticed that I had feelings THERE! (Also an indication that it might be interesting to notice my “body feelings” more when I am reading?) And now I can explain my resistance, and why I agreed so much with Chekhov – as I think I do! - and what the ultimate “timelessness” was that made me like this show so much. It is because the only hope I can still see is not in settling things, but in openness and transition, and change. That must be the reason why I liked the speech by Greta Thunberg so much – and probably why I can find any hope AT ALL in “Chekhov” …

I understand now why, reading it beforehand, I loved the ending – especially one bit that could have turned out in a number of ways: when Dr Astrov is reaching out to Vanya telling him that there is no hope for BOTH of them. It might have turned out sarcastic – which would have been entirely wrong. I think I understood the play rather well already – implicitly – or had gone about ten percent of the journey they had taken when I was reading it. So I was totally pleased with where “we” arrived. I had felt this moment to be one of GENUINELY reaching out, and it was. Dr Astrov is offering the only thing he CAN offer to “bring him back to life”: his own misery. There is no prospect of hope he can offer him, no comfort. The only thing he can show him is his own beating human heart …

I don’t even think that it will help. The way Vanya is feeling at the end, the only way of helping him would probably be what Dr Astrov has denied him: medicide. Nonetheless – “we” cannot actually stop doing this. Even FOR OUR OWN GOOD, I think, we cannot stop TRYING …