Such a wonderful play by the eternal Tchekov ,and a prestigious cast of gifted actors . It's a deep insight into human nature with its angelic and demonic aspects ,but eventually the positive wins over the dark side .I don't personally know if the BBC still produces its monthly plays which made its glory in the 70s and the 80s .RU-vid is actually a gold mine for such theatrical recordings that will always give a bright outlook of the British people's love for the theatre.
Love to see any Chekov play done well. Why did Chekov do two such similar plays as The Wood Demon and Uncle Vanya? What is the music played by Tom McCall at the end of The Wood Demon? It sort of sounds like Liszt, but tried to look it up and could find nothing. It's beautiful.
history has it ,this was not very successful and was rewritten into Uncle vanya which was successful, a comment above says he changed the happy ending in this to unhaooy endings , which is similar in a lot of Fyodor Dostoesvsky works , Notice how Anton address Climate Change way back in 1898 , mankind has not progressed much at all except in its eternal greed
Uncle Vanya is a rewrite of The Wood Demon. But when Chekhov's publisher wanted to pull copies of The Wood Demon, Chekhov insisted they were different plays because The Wood Demon was still selling copies and he was supporting his extended family and needed every cent he could get.
I am a great Chekhov fan but do hope this very flawed play won't put people off exploring the 4 or 5 masterpieces. It is not helped by a production in which the needs of stage and screen are unsuccessfully met so that multiple action/speech that work on stage just become messy on TV|. This is especially weak in the first act. There is also a range of acting styles, some more "theatrical" and projected, others more televisual and muted. Ian Holm seems physically inhibited while vocally uninhibited - perhaps that is part of his interpretation but it just looks awkward. The real interest of the piece is how he managed to re-work it into Uncle Vanya by stripping away superfluous characters, changing Sonia and Astrov a great deal (though Helen, Serebriakov, Telyeghin, the mother very little), crucially changing the victim of the shooting and achieving a masterpiece.
Lovely to see Geoffrey Bayldon here. One of a generation of theatre trained actors who have never been replaced . They never became huge ' stars but were impeccable in everything they did whether on stage or screen. Compared to the contemporary crop whose utter lack of technique and vocal ability are quite astonishing !
The Wood Demon Very wonderfull and COMPELLING AND refreshing drama from the Russian master play wrighter Mr ANTON CHECKOV I'm looking forward to hear this again and again .
Sir Ian Holm is an unsurpassed actor, I use to believe he was just a quite talented actor, however, as a Dennis Potter fan and looking at Potter 's back catalogue of plays I believe he is truly magnificent his performance in Potter's Midnight on the Highway was beyond belief. I feel that Potter was obsessed by the writing of Anton Chekhov another humanist, feminist and bearer of psychological truths First read this play as an early teenager the producer has certainly done it justice what a fantastic cast.
