Uncle Vanja according to Marco Bellocchio: between worries, anxieties and resignations of the last century and of our days. On stage at the Bellini Theater in Naples
It goes on stage at Teatro Bellini in these days, e until 19 January 2014, one of the most intense and profound dramas in the history of modern theater, and also one of the most famous of the production of Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanja.
Directed Marco Bellocchio, who had already confronted Chekhov in 1977 to make a televised representation of the drama "The Seagull". On stage, in the role of the protagonists, a superb and selfish Michele Placido in the role of Professor Serebryakov, e Sergio Rubini, in the role of the resigned and desperate Uncle Vanja.
The story takes place in the country estate inherited from Professor Serebryakov from the father of his deceased wife, and where his daughter currently lives Sonja Vlaar, the brother-in-law Uncle Vanja, and his mother-in-law. In an atmosphere that illustrates life in the Russian countryside in a very intense and vivid way, the existence of these people takes place in a monotonous and repetitive way. A sense of frustration and resignation hovers over all the characters that the viewer is able to perceive even without the need for words.
It is grasped in the long silences on stage, through the disappointed glances of those who, like Uncle Vanya and Sonja, have worked for many years to manage this country estate without obtaining any advantages, neither financial nor personal. The only pockets to have been enriched are those of Professor Serebrjakov, heir to the property from a formal point of view, but not a moral one, since he has already "replaced" his previous wife who passed away with Helena, a young and beautiful woman, who has already remarried.
Uncle Vanja he is continually lost in pessimistic and gloomy speeches about the lack of enthusiasm of his life and about the resignation to carry on his life in indifference and without any ideal. ("I am stifled by the thought that my life is lost without remedy"). It is the emblem of the man who does nothing but live with remorse and regrets, and who realizes that he has not fully enjoyed the best years of his life when it is too late. And like him, the others too are constantly waiting for something new to happen, so much so that they can revolutionize their sad lives.
The disruptive event is represented byarrival of Professor Serebrjakov and his new wife Helena on the estate of Uncle Vanja. A situation that disturbs the ancestral quiet of the place and the moods of those who live there, but which also manages to bring out the temperament of Vanya, who ends up falling in love with the young Helena. She, too, her niece Sonja seems to come out of the "lethargy" in which she had fallen in the course of her life, beginning to feel love for the doctor Astrov, who arrived at her estate to treat the professor.
But it is when Serebryakov decides to sell the property and land in order to obtain a fixed monthly income that Uncle Vanya's impatience and dissatisfaction are able to fully emerge. His vain and self-centered brother-in-law cannot take away his house, the place where in recent years he has worked hard with his niece Sonja, without having the merits recognized. The anger reaches extreme levels, and Vanya decides to point the gun at the old professor, missing his target miserably.
At the end of the drama, everything returns to the way it was before. The brief but intense "shock" of life caused by the arrival of Serebryakov and his wife does not bring with it consequences or changes. The loves have not been reciprocated, and Uncle Vanya's desire for redemption folds in on itself and dies only because the professor has decided to return to the city.
A detailed and evocative staging, the one created by Bellocchio for the representation of Uncle Vanja, and a special applause a Sergio Rubini, which made the protagonist of the extraordinarily ironic checovian drama, ready and sharp, but still bitter and resigned.
Uncle Vanja transmits a profound and irrefutable truth to the present day. Love life, always and in any case, remember to "act" rather than brooding on the past and on what has not been done. Attending the Uncle Vanja di Bellocchio today means being face to face with the anxieties and anxieties of the last century, but also with what we find ourselves living in, in the continuous search for serenity of mind and a mental balance that we find in the most boring and banal things of life. Like Uncle Vanya and Sonja who will continue, and until the end of their days, to work so as not to think, and to patiently endure the arrival of their "hour".
One sentence remains emblematic of all, a warning that manages to make us reflect on the "task" that we all have towards our posterity:
“Those who will live after us, in two or three hundred years, and for whom we are preparing the way, will they be grateful to us? Will they remember us with a good word?
