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Anton Chekhov would doubtlessly be surprised — and probably pleased — to see how Ivan Petrovich Voinitsky (a.k.a. his Uncle Vanya) has fled the endlessly boring hell of a rustic Russia on the cusp of the 20th century and time-traveled to new environs.

Films have plopped his play down in North Wales (1996's "August," directed by Anthony Hopkins, starring him, Kate Burton and Gawn Grainger), Australia's Outback (1994's "Country Life," directed by Michael Blakemore, starring John Hargreaves, Greta Scacchi and Sam Neill) and New York's pre-renovated New Amsterdam (1994's "Vanya on 42nd Street," a David Mamet take, directed by Louis Malle and Andre Gregory, starring Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore and Larry Pine).

"My play is not a Chekhov parody," the author says at the top as a kind of cautionary warning. "I've been saying that I take Chekhov scenes and characters and put them into a blender. It's my hope you don't have to know Chekhov super-well to enjoy it.

	Anton Chekhov

"The characters have those names because they had professor parents — university professors who named them for Chekhov characters — so they are not literally the characters he wrote, but they do reflect them as well as other Chekhov characters."

The swift Chekhov scholars out there have already picked up on the fact that there's no Masha in Uncle Vanya. There's one each in The Three Sisters and The Seagull, but nada in Vanya. "And my Masha is actually not like the Masha in either of those plays. I just decided I liked the sound of Masha better. Truthfully, she's a bit more like Madame Arkadina in The Seagull. She's the one who has not stayed home her whole life. She has gone and become a famous actress, and it's her country estate she's thinking of selling. Even though Madame Arkadina wasn't selling her home, she handled the purse strings."

There is a cherry orchard talked about but never seen, and there aren't three sisters — only a sister and brother and stepsister. The latter two, Vanya and Sonia, "are somewhat closer to Chekhov than the other characters. They're the ones staying at the estate doing all the work. Sonia is a little bit like the Chekhov Sonia in that she has never found romantic fulfillment. She doesn't have a specific character like the doctor to fixate on, but she's kinda unhappy and bitter about things.

"Spike is the boy-toy of Masha. She's had five unsuccessful marriages, and — a la Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore — she has taken up with a younger man for the first time. Usually, she married people her own age, but suddenly she's with this (she says) 29-year-old. Vanya and Sonia think she's probably added some time to him."