{"id":4505,"date":"2023-10-05T16:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-05T16:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/?p=4505"},"modified":"2023-10-05T15:02:15","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T15:02:15","slug":"vanya-the-one-man-chekov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patsytrench.com\/2023\/10\/05\/vanya-the-one-man-chekov\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanya: the one-man Chekov"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\u2018Uncle Vanya\u2019 is a play very dear to my heart. Many decades ago I played Sonya in rep at Harrogate Playhouse. I had only just started out as a professional actress, with no training other than getting out there and doing it, and while I have no idea if I was any good or not I identified with Sonya totally and utterly: the plain, naive girl who falls in unrequited love with a man who looks on her as no more than a friend, and a child to boot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More recently I booked to see the play in the West End but was thwarted when Covid shut down the theatres the day before I was due to see it in March 2020. Fortunately that production, with Toby Jones as Uncle Vanya, was subsequently filmed, so I was able to watch it over and over until I knew every word, every movement by heart. It was a wonderful production and featured Aimee Lou Wood as a heartbreaking Sonya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The play also features very strongly in my current novel-in-progress. My central character is an actress who thinks she is the bees\u2019 knees until she is put very firmly in her place by a Russian disciple of the great Stanislavsky. When asked to act the part of Sonya in a demonstration of the famous System she is bullied into a realisation that acting is more than just walking onto a stage and projecting your lines to the furthest row of the gallery. Through the medium of honest, homespun Sonya the sophisticated, haughty Meredith learns something not just about herself but about the whole business of acting itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So when I heard that Andrew Scott was to play every part<\/em> in a one-man production of the play my first thought was, Why? <\/p>\n\n\n