‘Let’s drink nunny!’, Mariya Sedykh (Itogi)

The Vakhtangov actors break dull aging traditions of presenting Checkhov’s personages in the glaring and saucy way. If in the play, Serebryakov is a self-affected egoist, in the representation of Vladimir Simonov we see a vivified monument, that sets inflexible fees as the Statue of the Commander. If Elena Andreevna is described as a lady with the mermaid blood, Anna Dubrovskaya plays a character who only for a moment — in the final scenes — appears a real woman. Uncle Vanya says, “When there is no real life, people live as mirages”. Odd mirages come from the darkness of the old house, some of them in Chaplin’s bowler (as Waffles plaid by Yury Kraskov), others — in cowboy hats (as Doctor Astrov played by Vladimit Vdovichenkov). All this macabre grotesque exists to emphasise two small and awkward human beings — Sonya and Ivan Petrovich. Maria Berdinskikh and Sergey Makovetsky do not tell the story of the lost life. Their heroes, looking like Lilliputians in the Land of Giants, have no idea that it is only them who really suffer and live with dignity. On this dignity the tragedy of the performance is based.