Marina (pours a glass of tea) Have some, my Mishka.

Astrov (takes glass reluctantly) Not really in the mood.

Marina A splash of vodka?

Astrov No. I don’t drink vodka every day. And it’s too clammy. (Pause.) How long have we known each other, Nanny?

Marina (considers) Sweet Jesus. I’ll have to think. You came here – well, Sonya’s mother Vera was still alive – you saw her in her last winter – and the one before – so that’s – eleven years. (A moment’s thought.) Maybe more –

Astrov Have I changed a lot?

Marina Yes, you were young and handsome then, now you’re old you’re no looker. And you like a splash of vodka.

Astrov Yes. Ten years, I’m a different man. I’m burned out, Nanny. On my feet all day – then nights under the covers, dreading being dragged off to another patient. Not one day off in all the years we’ve known each other. So yes: I grew old. And the boredom of it. The squalor and stupidity, it’s depressing. You’re surrounded by lunatics – unhinged, the lot of them – and after a year or two your own screws loosen a bit, it’s inevitable, you become unhinged yourself. (Twirling his long moustache.) Look at this moustache, it’s like a shrubbery. See, Nyanya, unhinged. But not stupid yet, thank God. The brain functions, it’s my feelings that are – sort of – numb. I don’t want anything, need anything, love anybody. Except you – I think I love you.

I had a nyanya just like you when I was a boy.

Marina Something to eat, maybe?

Astrov No. Few weeks before Easter I went to Malítskoe – outbreak of typhus. Peasants crammed into their huts, muck and stench, calves and piglets lying among the sick. I work my guts out without a poppy seed to eat, and even when I get home it doesn’t stop – some signalman from the railway. I put him on the operating table and under the chloroform he goes and dies on me. And just when I don’t want to feel anything, I begin to really feel – and it’s my pricking conscience, as if I’d deliberately killed him. I sit – shut my eyes – think – in the future, a century or two, will the people for whom we’re beating this path have one good thing to say about us? Bet your life they won’t, Nanny.

Marina People won’t remember, God will.

Astrov Thank you. Well said.

Vanya Yes. (Pause.) Yes.

Astrov Nice nap?

Vanya Yes. Very. (Yawns.) Before the professor and his better half came, life followed a straight path – it’s gone all wonky. I sleep weird hours, I eat spicy food like an Afghani, I’m at the wine. It’s not healthy. I used to not have a spare second – Sonya and I worked and worked. Now Sonya works and I eat, sleep and drink. It’s bad.

Marina (shaking her head disapprovingly) It’s chaos. The professor lies in till noon and the tea’s been on the boil for him since morning. Before they came, we had lunch at one-ish like normal people – with them it’s after six. He reads and writes into the night – suddenly after one, ding-a-ling – Sweet Jesus, what’s that? – He wants tea – servants hauled out of bed just for him – chaos.

Astrov Are they staying much longer?

Vanya (whistles) A hundred years. The prof’s decided it’s home. The lord’s come back to his land.

Marina And the tea’s been ready two hours and they’re off on a ramble –

Vanya They’re coming, they’re coming, don’t get into a flap.

Serebryakov Exquisite scenery. Outstanding views.

Telegin Aren’t they, professor, outstanding –

Sonya Tomorrow we’ll go to the tree plantation, Pa. Would you like to?

Vanya Tea time, ding-a-ling.

Serebryakov Send mine to the study if you would, please, my friends. I still have a thing I need to see to today.

Sonya You’ll enjoy the tree plantation –

Vanya Sweltering. Sticky as you like. And His Excellency Professor Brains clomps about in overcoat and galoshes, with umbrella and gloves.

Astrov He takes care of himself, clearly.

Vanya But Yelena – now she is lovely. Lovely. I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman.

Telegin (to Marina) Driving across fields, ambling in a shady garden, just looking at this table, Nyanya – I can never find the words for the happiness. Ideal weather. Birdsong. All of us at one with the world and each other, what more could we ask for? (Taking his tea.) Thank you very much, I’m so grateful.

Vanya (dreamily) Her eyes. Wonderful woman.

Astrov Come on, Vanya, tell us something.

Vanya What?

Astrov What’s new?

Vanya Nothing. It’s all old. I’m the same as always, worse probably, because I’m a loafer now, do bugger all but bitch. As for my old crow of a mother, still banging on about the rights of women, one eye on the grave, the other scouring her bluestocking books for the key to the door to the new life.

Astrov And the professor?

Vanya And the professor is holed up in his study, as always –

I feel sorry for the paper. He might get somewhere if he wrote his autobiography. Now there’s a subject. Retired professor, you know, stock character, stale and scholarly, desiccated old fish, gout, rheumatism, migraines, liver bloated olive with jealousy. And this dried-up seaweed is living on his first wife’s estate – but not by choice: because he can’t afford to live in the city. And he bitches all day about his bad luck: but the truth is he couldn’t be luckier. (Becoming agitated.) So lucky. The luck. Son of a humble church sexton, little chorister from the seminary, mounts the stairs of the Academy, gets himself a chair, claws his way up the long ladder of ranks, son-in-law of a senator, et cetera – and this isn’t even the point. For twenty-five years, the seaweed has been lecturing and writing about aesthetics – and what does he know about aesthetics? Bugger all. Twenty-five years chewing on other people’s ideas about realism and naturalism and every other kind of ism; twenty-five years lecturing and writing about things which anyone with half a brain has always known and which idiots couldn’t give a toss about. Twenty-five years pouring bollocks from one empty jug to another. And the vanity. The posturing. And now he’s retired, no one’s heard of him, he’s a wholesale nobody – so for twenty-five years he’s had his arse parked in a chair that belonged to somebody else. And look at him, sashaying about the farm like a demigod.

Astrov I think the one green with envy is you.

Vanya Oh, I am envious of him. And his luck with women! Puts Don Juan in the shade. Wife number one, my dear sister – the loveliest and gentlest of souls, pure as the blue sky; good and sweet, with more admirers than he’s had students. She loved him as only an angel can love another angel. And my mother worships him, even now she couldn’t make the pedestal any higher. As for Yelena the Beautiful, the Intelligent, wife number two – you saw. She marries him when he’s old. She chucks her youth and beauty and freedom and – I don’t know – all her vitality after him, and what for, why?

Astrov Is she faithful to him?

Vanya Yes, unfortunately.

Astrov Why ‘unfortunately’?

Vanya Because it’s a sham. The logic is all warped – to cheat on your repellent...