IN WATCHING MIXED-BREED dogs play, I’ve often thought that mutts are more dog than the purest purebred. This brings me to Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” (1897), a singularly psychologically destabilizing piece of theater that’s now being seen anew as a study of post-Covid paralysis, not to mention the existential dread of watching your life slip away by the spoonful. The pandemic and the boorish political and public discourse that followed drove us inward, unable to fight back, going nuts like poor Vanya. For Uncle Vanya, this situation becomes intolerable, especially after Serebryakov insists that the property be sold and the profits set aside for his comfort. Equally unbearable: the professor’s new wife, Yelena, a detached beauty years his junior who’s driving Vanya and the alcoholic Dr. Astrov, another visitor, batty with lust.

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Persons: I’ve, William Shakespeare’s “, Edward Albee’s “, Virginia Woolf ”, —, Anton Chekhov’s “, Vanya ”, that’s, you’re, Vanya, Plotwise, Serebryakov, “, ”, he’s, he’s sponged, Uncle Vanya, Yelena, Astrov, batty, you’d Locations: Moscow