Uncle Vanya "Another Russian wrist slitter"

I think that it is going to be potentially difficult to look at Uncle Vanya from a play writing perspective after having spent the past several months looking at it as an actor. However, I feel a bit as though that's a problem I am having with this blog in general. After years of looking at plays from one perspective, its difficult to make the adjustment to a different one. So, that said, I am going to do my darndest to be good on this one. Maybe this is the turning point.
Yesterday, I was having lunch at Farellies and the woman in the next booth leaned over and commented that she had seen the play and enjoyed it. She then looked at me and smiled and said "another Russian wrist slitter, huh?" I think that she brings up a good point about Uncle Vanya and plays by Anton Chekhov in general, that they are chock full of people who are absolutely miserable, and mostly, who have accepted that as their fate and have stopped trying to change it. A concern that Marilyn, (our director) voiced at the begining of the project was being able to find enough humor or at least places where we could build in humor, that the audience wouldn't leave the theatre and commit suicide. I know that prior to casting the show, Marilyn read pretty much every translation of Uncle Vanya that exists and picked the Van Itallie version because she saw the most potential for lightness.
I think that reincorporation is something that this play does really well. For instance, (and I only oaught on to this bit of brialliant writing after opening weekend...silly, I know) Astrov tells Sonya that if "the intellectuals" don't know what label to pin on you they say "strange." "And if they don't know what label to pin on you, they think - 'strange, what a strange man.' You love the forest - 'strange.' You don't eat meat - 'strange.'" That bit occurs in act two. In act three, Yelena refers to Astrov as a "strange man" and again in act three, Serebryakov says of Vanya, "his conduct is strange, to say the least." I hadn't caught that before, and I was never sure why people were laughing at those lines, as both of the reincorporations occur where the content is pretty serious and dramatic. I think that is really amazing writing, and it serves a couple of purposes that I can see. It validates Astov as a truth teller. By proving what he said to be true, Chekhov encourages the audience to love him the way that all the other characters do. Astrov is one of the only characters who is universally liked in the play, and by using such subtle tricks, such as the reincorporation and validation of his drunken claims about the other characters, the audience is encourages to fall in love with him too.
One thing that was hard about Vanya, looking at the writing (albeit from an actor's perspective...hang it all...) is that the lines, especially some of the longer ones tend to be pretty repetitive. This, obviously, re-enforces what the character is trying to say, but it also makes the lines ridiculously hard to learn.
I think that people get something different out of seeing a play onstage, even if you are really good at imagining it for yourself. There is something beautiful about being able to read a play before you go see it. I think that you pick up on more of the subtleties if your not jumping in cold to looking at a performance. Obviously, there are positives to both ways, cold and, shall we say, warm, but I think that especially with a play like Shakespeare or Chekhov, or others that might be slightly more archaic, more removed from that which we know, a reading before hand can increase our enjoyment.