After the Petersburg flop, Chekhov was hesitant to grant anyone permission to produce his Seagull, but he eventually agreed to let Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, the co-founders of MXAT, stage the Moscow premiere. This series of debacles finally came to an end in 1898. The ruthless Petersburg audience howled at Chekhov’s play, taking special delight in a character’s wheelchair that kept losing its grip on the raked stage. If the disastrous premieres of Ivanov and The Wood Demon weren’t enough to dissuade Chekhov from writing again for the theater, the calamitous 1896 premiere of The Seagull in St. Half the cast forgot their lines, the actresses were dreadful, and the audience booed. The Wood Demon, an early draft of Uncle Vanya, fared no better two years later.

On the opening night of Ivanov in 1887, only two of the leading actors knew their lines, and other cast members were drunk. Prior to its production of The Seagull, Chekhov had endured three humiliating premieres in Moscow and St. Chekhov, however, had already promised the play to the state-supported Maly Theatre.

After its triumph, MXAT expected to receive the rights to the Moscow premiere of Uncle Vanya. The previous year, the newly founded Moscow Art Theater (MXAT) had staged a tremendously successful production Chekhov’s The Seagull. In 1899, Anton Chekhov found himself in an awkward situation.

Chekhov play uncle