ABSTRACT
If ‘Uncle Vanya’ had been a stranger, and Chekhov an unknown dramatist, I should feel bound to attempt a critical analysis. Yet on what slender grounds! For though this was in some ways one of the happiest evenings I have spent with the Russian players, it was in others the most elusive. The externals of the production were less charming than those of the English one we saw some months ago. Here was none of Komisarjevsky's visual poetry; and the crises in the action seem to approach nearer to melodrama. But though we neither saw romantic pictures, nor listened to a story that seemed half fairy-tale, it was clear that these scenes from country life were drawn by a master hand.
