“Being alive is kissing a tree going 293 miles-per-hour through a windshield and then waking up to take your first baby steps again.” – Uncle Vanya
If you desperately wanted to try cake, but a pompous, greedy old fool barged in and took the last slice for himself, is that his fault, or yours? Does life owe you some cake, or have you just wasted your time waiting – until one day the cake is all gone? This play isn’t actually about a wasted cake, but it is about wasted life and the feeling that you’ve lost something without ever really having it. It is about reclaiming that feeling of being alive.
Stuck in a country house during the break-out of a pandemic, a family is consumed by lethargy, boredom, and regret, and so they begin to act in bizarre and chaotic ways. No one acts more deranged and is more miserable than Ivan Petrovich Voynitski (nicknamed ‘uncle Vanya’), the tragic and hilarious hero, who sets off a chain of events leading to scandalous affairs, murder attempts, and decade-old secrets to spread like wildfire. Ultimately, the strangeness and insanity of these events result in different disillusionments and resolutions for all the characters, but the ending is not an apparently happy one.
‘For the Love of Vanya’ is a tragi-comedy which bridges the gap between the classic Chekhovian world and the recent modern times. The play has been written to take the original idea of the play and make it less pretentious, so please don’t be put off by Chekhov’s lofty reputation! You won’t have to sit through 3 hours of monologues.
Tickets will be £2.50 for Centre Stage members, £5 for students, and £8 for non-students. Doors open at 6pm on the 24th-26th of April in Arts Lecture Theatre, University Campus. See you there!
TICKETS WILL GO ON SALE LATER THIS MONTH AND WILL BE AVAILABLE THROUGH @centrestage ON SOCIALS, OR ON THE AUSA WEBSITE.
