Tío Vanya

I watched this tonight with just one other person across the cinema. At the end, he rose and gave a silent standing ovation.

But it is the first one I could not stop watching, since it was on PBS Great Performances I had time to look up the play, inject a little understanding into why it is still around and companies keep producing it, who the actors were otherwise if I had been in the theater I may not have stayed awake until the end; I often hate to see the ends of things for some reason. The actors were great and for the first time I understood what was going on; honestly there was not a character I could not feel empathy for; these lives we live. I heartily recommend you turn it on, put on 'closed captioning if you need to and listen to their story and their lives; ahh, aching for somebody who gives you nothing back...we humans.

The most beautiful Uncle Vanya I've seen in my life, with state-of-the-art performances by all the entire cast of Harold Pinter Theatre, all simply amazing, especially the great actress, and so adorable, Aimee Lou Wood as Sonya, and the great Toby Jones as Vanya.

Striking setting, acting as good as anything I've seen. Up to now I've seen Toby Jones mostly in humorous roles; now I understand why he commands such respect as an actor. (I was surprised that he managed to get in a word I've never seen in Chekhov.)

I am so pleased that this was filmed and shown in the US. While it is always my preference to be in the room for live theatre, there is no way I would have gotten to see this even if there hadn't been a global pandemic. I can't speak to whether it was a typical performance of Chekhov, but I very much enjoyed the acting (no surprise that Richard Armitage and Toby Jones were excellent and I learned a few new names to watch for).