"Uncle Vanya" (2020) after the play by the Russian writer Anton Chekhov, which was published in 1897 and premiered in 1899 at the Moscow Art Theatre.
This English version from 2020 was produced under the restrictions of the Covid p(l)andemic. London's Harold Pinter Theatre was closed and it was decided to bring the cast back under guidelines and film the play for release in cinemas and later on the BBC. The result is awesome.
Vanya: "What news could there possibly be? Everything's the same as ever, except worse. Well that's not true, it is, you know, I sit around getting fatter and the fatter I get the more annoyed I am with everyone. And my mother - Jesus Christ - she's exactly the same still banging on about women's rights as if they're some kind of alien abstract concept rather than something that might actually help improve her own wasted life where is she up up in the professor's study."
Vanya: "Yes I'm working, where here the professor summoned me, oh of course well he he's an incorrigible hypochondriac, we all have to tiptoe around his various ailments while he composes his latest treatise with straining brain and wrinkled brow. He works into the night, the only thing that it produces, you know, he spent 30 years writing papers no one understands for journals no one ever reads. 30 years of of utter obscurity all the while hogging the post of Professor from someone who might actually have something to offer so not only has he offered the world nothing, he's actually deprived it."
Astrov: "You sound jealous to me, Vanya."
Vanya: "You're right, I am jealous. I mean, could someone please explain his effect on women? Now his first wife - my poor late sister - she was so sweet, so intelligent, she could have had her pick of anyone in the whole world, but no it'd be him and now his second wife, a full 40 years younger than him, beautiful, stunning, clever, you know and she's gonna give it all away for that old knobbly croaker. For what, I mean why?"
Astrov: "She must be in love."
Vanya: "You are joking."
Astrov: "Is she faithful to him?"
Vanya: "Inexplicably, yes."
Astrov: "Why inexplicably?"
Vanya:
"Well it makes no sense, well where's the morality in denying your youth, your vitality and pissing it away on some conceited old duffer?"