Uncle Vanya

Freddie Jones is Uncle Vanya, who has been reviewing his life and finding it empty. He's envious of his widowed brother-in-law, an eminent Professor (Roland Culver), who has a beautiful new, young wife (Ann Bell). Never having married nor had the advantages of his late sister's husband, Vanya comes to resent the Professor and pours his guts out to his only real friend, the local doctor (Anthony Hopkins). As they are all cooped up in one house, things come to an explosive head.

Freddie Jones perfectly captures both Vanya's world-weariness and his long-simmering resentment. The rest of the cast is uniformly good, perhaps to keep pace wirh him. They all have an appreciation for the ennui Chekhov implies.

"Uncle Vanya" has been well-done a number of times. A later version has David Warner as a Vanya simmering with resentment in a version by David Mamet, acting with Ian Holm as an equally doomed Doctor and Ian Bannen as a particularly high-handed Professor. An earlier version, b&w and presented live, has Olivier as the doctor and Michael Redgrave as a particularly repressed Vanya. But this is my favorite version as Jones' Vanya strikes the right balance.