Tony Award-winning director Mathew Warchus, who staged The Norman Conquests in London and on Broadway, is attached, as are producers David Pugh and Dafydd Rogers, who commissioned the work from Ayckbourn. According to Variety, Ayckbourn's favorite play is Uncle Vanya (1897), about unrealized lives and loves. His adaptation will move the action from Russia to Britain's Lake District in 1935.
Fiennes ("The English Patient," Broadway's Hamlet) would play the role based on Astrov, the doctor.
No theatre or dates have been announced, though Pugh told the trade paper that a non-traditional venue might be sought. "The Norman Conquests worked very successfully in-the-round and we're looking to find somewhere different where we could do that shape again," Pugh said.
