Content Warning: This play includes depictions of alcohol abuse, sexual harassment, and attempted murder, as well as discussions of suicide and depression.

Uncle Vanya explores the pain and regret that arise when characters believe they have wasted their potential. Many of the play’s characters are keenly aware of the opportunities they have squandered and the unfulfilled promises of their pasts. In many of Anton Chekhov’s works, characters wrangle with the awareness of their own wasted potential, along with more general themes of loss and nostalgia. These preoccupations are a commentary on the social context of late 19th-century Russia; at the time, it was becoming increasingly evident that the traditional status quo was being supplanted by a new social order. For much of the population, such change elicited strong collective feelings of nostalgia for a more stable past, fear about the uncertain future, and—among the landowning nobility—regret over their class’s diminishing superiority.

The character who most embodies the pain and regret of wasted potential is Voitski, who is the titular Uncle Vanya of the play. In his monologues and laments, he expresses his regret that his own promise was thrown away in the service of his brother-in-law, leaving Voitski himself with no prospects.