but pointed to defects in both the play and the acting. As the staging and the acting improved over successive performances, however, and as "the public understood better its inner meaning and nuances of feeling", the reviews improved. Uncle Vanya became a permanent fixture in the Moscow Art Theatre. Other actors who have appeared in notable stage productions of Uncle Vanya include Michael Redgrave, Paul Scofield, Peter O'Toole, Albert Finney, Franchot Tone, Cate Blanchett, Peter Dinklage, Jacki Weaver, Antony Sher, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Simon Russell Beale, William Hurt, George C. Scott, Donald Sinden, Derek Jacobi, Michael Gambon, Tom Courtenay, Trevor Eve and Laurence Olivier. The play was also adapted as the new stage-play Dear Uncle by the British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, who reset it in the 1930s Lake District. This adaptation premiered from July to September 2011 at the Stephen Joseph Theatre. In January 2014 24/6: A Jewish Theater Company performed TuBishVanya, a modern adaption that incorporated Jewish and environmental themes. Parodies The Fifth Elephant, a 1999 novel by Terry Pratchett, includes a pastiche of Chekhov plays in which "the gloomy and purposeless trousers of Uncle Vanya" are loaned to Captain Vimes. Life Sucks: Or the Present Ridiculous, a 2015 stage adaptation by Aaron Posner, premiered at Theater J in Washington, DC. The Reduced Shakespeare Company performed a shortened version of the play on their BBC radio show in 2010 that contained only three lines: "Are you Uncle Vanya?" "I am." [Gunshot sounds] "Ouch!" Uncle Vanya and Zombies, a 2012 post-apocalyptic stage adaptation by Markus Wessendorf, premiered at Kennedy Theatre in Honolulu. Other adaptations Over the years, Uncle Vanya has been adapted for film several times. Uncle Vanya, a 1957 adaptation of a concurrent Off-Broadway production that starred Franchot Tone, who co-produced and co-directed the film Uncle Vanya, a version of the star-studded 1962–63 Chichester Festival stage production, directed for the stage by Laurence Olivier, who played Astrov, and also starring Michael Redgrave as Vanya, Max Adrian as Professor Serebryakov, Rosemary Harris as Yelena and Olivier's wife Joan Plowright as Sonya. Harold Hobson of The Sunday Times described the Chichester production as "the admitted master achievement in British twentieth-century theatre" while The New Yorker called it "probably the best 'Vanya' in English we shall ever see". Uncle Vanya, a 1970 Russian film version, adapted and directed by Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky. Uncle Vanya, a 1991 episode of the BBC Performance anthology