"'It's often said that the best of the Chekhov plays is the one you've seen most recently. 'Uncle Vanya' doesn't have a suicide, like "The Seagull", or an adulterous couple and a duel more or less indistinguishable from murder, like 'Three Sisters'; nor does it seem to announce the end of an era, like 'The Cherry Orchard': all it has is a series of ludicrously bungled attempts at murder and suicide and adultery. Perhaps these failures are what makes it feel the saddest and most truthful of these great tragi-comedies, in which, possibly unique to all drama, not a single word seems redundant or out of place."--From the author's introduction.