I guess all of us as we get older have occasion to wonder if we've wasted our lives or at least not achieved what we should have done. I'm not too prone to this myself, being someone who tends to be positive. I've have some success in my work, I played a key part in the success of The Mayflower and The Gantry Arts Centre and now I enjoy running a small business that is doing all right in this difficult economic climate. Most importantly, I have a wonderful wife and family so I don 't feel it would be right to have regrets. Nevertheless, when I look at my bank balance or do my own vacuuming, I am aware that I may have missed some opportunities and wonder where I might have been if I had taken them. A theatre critic, maybe?

These thoughts came to me after my visit to Chichester Festival Theatre's Minerva to see Uncle Vanya. Their production of Chekhov's play in a translation by Michael Frayn is totally engrossing and very moving. In essence it is about middle aged people living in the country who feel they have wasted their lives. Vanya, played by Roger Allam, is desperately sad but at the same time extracts much humour from the pathos of his situation. He and his niece, a heartbreaking performance from Dervla Kirwan, run his late sister's country estate which subsidises her widower, an academic professor. The latter, a bumbling, arrogant but at the same time vulnerable man, is brilliantly portrayed by Timothy West. He too is seen to be a failure, the only difference being that he hasn't the self awareness of the others.

Alexander Hanson plays the local doctor, a good man whose moral compass has become skewed by his sense of life having passed him by. The professor's new young wife, played by Lara Pulver, may excite the middle aged men but she feels herself trapped in her mistaken marriage.

Nothing much has changed at the end of the two hours but we have laughed and cried as these characters revealed the depths of their sadness. As a portrayal of midlife crisis that leads to resignation rather than rebellion, Chichester's Uncle Vanya is unbeatable.

Go see this production- you won't regret it.

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