Lost in translation? A new "Uncle Vanya" at Intiman Theatre

The tall stack of English-language translations of plays by Anton Chekhov keeps on growing. Karl Kramer thinks he knows why.

"It's a matter of almost universal dissatisfaction with all the existing translations," says the retired University of Washington professor of Slavic languages, who has rendered several Chekhov plays into English.

"Most other Russian writers don't have this experience in English. People don't keep striving to get Turgenev translations right. But there's something elusive about Chekhov, something very hard to catch."

Another attempt to catch that special something is under way at Intiman Theatre, as artistic director Bartlett Sher readies his new mounting of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." Featuring film-stage actors Samantha Mathis and Mark Nelson, the show finishes previews tonight and opens Saturday.

Sher could have plucked a script from the scores of existing "Vanyas" in English — including adaptations by such major modern dramatists as David Mamet, Brian Friel and Michael Frayn.

But Sher commissioned yet another fresh adaptation (forged from a literal translation from the Russian original). And the adapter is Craig Lucas — who also crafted the English text for a hit staging of Chekhov's "Three Sisters," which Sher premiered at Intiman in 2005.

Lucas, Intiman's associate artistic director, is off filming a new movie, "The Laws of Motion" (starring Hilary Swank) and unavailable for comment. (He will return to Seattle soon to put the final touches an original play, "Prayer for My Enemy," which Sher will stage at Intiman in July.)

But Sher has plenty to say about their new "Vanya" collaboration.

"Craig has a great sense of the conciseness of Chekhov. His script runs just two hours, and it's very succinct and sharp.

"What I find with most other English versions of the play is that they're lugubrious and too wordy, as if the translators were trying to fit in every single thing they thought Chekhov might have intended."

But what did Chekhov intend? There's the rub.

The writer-physician penned his seriocomic plays about the stalled, fading, late-19th-century Russian gentry in his mother tongue. And he had adamant ideas about how "Uncle Vanya" and his other scripts should be staged.

For instance, his correspondence reveals that he felt Moscow Art Theatre head Constantin Stanislavsky, the first director of "Vanya" and a veteran actor, was all wrong for the role of Astrov — a disaffected country doctor and friend to Vanya, an equally disaffected estate manager. (Stanislavsky played the part anyway.)

Though he gave many such notes, Chekhov (who died of tuberculosis in 1904 at age 44) did not leave detailed instructions to future translators of his formally simple yet psychologically and tonally complex scripts.

Nor could he have imagined that, a century after his death, four of his plays ("Vanya," "Three Sisters," "The Sea Gull" and "The Cherry Orchard") would be so widely revered and produced — and so devilishly tricky to convert into English.

Why so? One pitfall, Sher says, is the American tendency to view Chekhov's frustrated and unfulfilled characters "as just grim and long-suffering ... when they should really be eccentric and funny, smart and full of life."

Kramer agrees. "Many productions in English have made Chekhov's characters nothing but miserable. There's a lot more to them than that."

Another challenge for translators: Chekhov "put a lot of contemporary Russian references in his scripts, which are totally lost on an American audience," Kramer says. "The question is what to cut, and what to keep."

An example from "Uncle Vanya": a clever nod to Ivan Aivazovsky, a 19th-century painter well-known in Russia, but obscure to us. (Lucas, like most adapters, has cut the reference.)

Also difficult: transferring this most conversational of plays, in which a small circle of people reminisce and dream and rage in a country house, into dialogue that isn't anachronistic or overtly slangy.

"Our 'Vanya' isn't very idiomatic," Sher assures. "There's no heavy slang, and we're faithful to the world of these characters. But it's a little rough at times, like Chekhov can be rough."

Chekhov, foul-mouthed? Says Kramer, "In his letters he was capable of very rough language. When the Soviets brought out the first complete publication of his [plays and stories], they put in a note that some expressions had been removed ... things you don't say in polite society."

A disgruntled patron suggested something similar, when Kramer's translation of "The Cherry Orchard" (co-crafted with Intiman founder Margaret Booker) debuted here in 1980.

"The man objected to the 'bad language' in the play, and asked what Chekhov would have thought of it," Kramer recalls. "My feeling was, if more such words had been accepted in theater in Chekhov's time, he would have used them."

Trying to forge a perfectly faithful yet unstilted, modern yet true-to-period translation of "Uncle Vanya," may be a quixotic endeavor.

And in the end, Sher insists there is far more to Chekhov's dramaturgy than the words the actors speak.

"So much of what Chekhov does is not on the page. He's one of those beautiful writers who understands the difference between what someone says, and all the million things they might really mean. I just have to trust that Craig nailed the tone, and that our actors will fill in the subtext."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com