Uncle Vanya

About Anton Chekhov

David Hare has written over thirty stage plays and thirty screenplays for film and television. The plays include Plenty Pravda (with Howard Brenton) The Secret Rapture Racing Demon Skylight Amy's View The Blue Room Via Dolorosa Stuff Happens The Absence of War The Judas Kiss The Red Barn The Moderate Soprano I'm Not Running and Beat the Devil. For cinema he has written The Hours The Reader Damage Denial Wetherby and The White Crow among others while his television films include Licking Hitler the Worricker Trilogy Collateral and Roadkill. In a millennial poll of the greatest plays of the twentieth century five of the top hundred were his. Anton Chekhov Russian dramatist and short-story writer was born in 1860 the son of a grocer and the grandson of a serf. After graduating in medicine from Moscow University in 1884 he began to make his name in the theatre with the one-act comedies The Bear The Proposal and The Wedding. His earliest full-length plays Ivanov (1887) and The Wood Demon (1889) were not successful and The Seagull produced in 1896 was a failure until a triumphant revival by the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. This was followed by Uncle Vanya (1899) Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904) shortly after the production of which Chekhov died. The first English translations of his plays were performed within five years of his death.