Anton Chekhov

"The Seagull", performed in 1896 and published in Russia the following year as Chayka, is a slice-of-life drama by Anton Chekhov set in the Russian countryside at the end of the 19th century. The cast of characters is dissatisfied with their lives. Some desire love. Some desire success. Some desire artistic genius. No one, however, ever seems to attain happiness.Scholars have often said that Chekhovs plays are not plot driven. Instead, the plays are character studies designed to create a specific mood. Some critics view "The Seagull" as a tragic play about eternally unhappy people. Others see it as a humorous albeit bitter satire, poking fun at human folly.

"Uncle Vanya", Anton Chekhovs masterpiece of frustrated longing and wasted lives, was originally a much more conventional drama in its earlier incarnation. Previously known as "The Wood Demon", the play was rejected by two theatres before premiering in Moscow in December of 1889 to a very poor reception (it closed after three performances). Sometime between that date and 1896, Chekhov revised the play, altering it radically. Chekhovs "Uncle Vanya" explores the disruption and discontent of a small group of people in rural 19th century Russia, and since its publication has helped pave the way for many of the worlds finest contemporary playwrights.Uncle Vanya spends his time idling around the country estate of his brother-in-law, Serebryakov, a retired professor, in Russia, 1898. His sister (the professors wife) dead, Vanya indulges in a romantic malaise over Serebryakovs beautiful, young second wife, Yelena. Meanwhile Doctor Astrov, summoned to the estate to tend to the professors myriad imagined aches and pains, is also in love with the enigmatic Yelena and remains oblivious to the fact that Serebryakovs daughter, Sonya, yearns for him. Trouble develops when Serebryakov announces his plan to sell the estate (Vanya and Sonyas home) in order to invest the profits and make a fortune for himself and Yelena.

The most widely staged dramatist after Shakespeare, Chekhov left a deep mark both on the development of Russian literature and world theatre, with plays that were remarkable not just for their dialogue but their atmosphere and the tensions expressed between the lines.Collected in this volume are Chekhovs four most celebrated plays The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard in a brand-new translation by Hugh Aplin. In these personal stories of unfulfilled love, failed ambition and existential ennui, set against a background of unsettling social and economical change, the reader can appreciate the groundbreaking qualities of Chekhovs theatrical genius.

Drama Classics: The Worlds Great Plays at a Great Little PriceChekhovs early tragedy, translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine.Arkadina, a famous actress, and her lover, a famous novelist, are spending the summer on her country estate, but their glamorous presence proves fatally disruptive to the lives of all those present, especially her son, Konstantin and Nina, the girl he loves.Anton Chekhovs play The Seagull was first staged at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in October 1896.This translation by Stephen Mulrine, published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, was first staged by English Touring Theatre in 1997.

A unique collection of everything that Chekhov wrote about the theatre.Chekhov started writing about theatre in newspaper articles and in his own letters even before he began writing plays. Later, he wrote in detail about his own plays to his lifelong friend and mentor Alexei Suvorin, his wife and leading actress, Olga Knipper, and to the two directors of the Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko.Collected for this volume, these writings reveal Chekhovs instinctive curiosity about the way theatre works and his concerns about how best to realise his own intentions as a playwright. Often peppery, passionate, even distraught, as he feels his plays misinterpreted or undermined, Chekhov comes over in these pages as a true man of the theatre.

I know now, Kostya, I understand that in our work - doesnt matter whether its acting or writing - whats important isnt fame or glamour, none of the things I used to dream about, its the ability to endure. The Seagull is one of the great plays about writing. It superbly captures the struggle for new forms, the frustrations and fulfilments of putting words on a page. Chekhov, in his first major play, staged a vital argument about the theatre which still resonates today. Christopher Hamptons new version of this classic, directed by Ian Rickson in his last production as Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre, London, premiered in January 2007.

Anton Chekhovs play Uncle Vanya in a new version by Christopher Hampton. This version will be first staged at the Vaudeville Theatre, London, on 25 October 2012 and run until 16 February 2013.Its often said that the best of the Chekhov plays is the one youve seen most recently. Uncle Vanya doesnt have a suicide, like The Seagull, or an adulterous couple and a duel more or less indistinguishable from murder, like Three Sisters; nor does it seem to announce the end of an era, like The Cherry Orchard: all it has is a series of ludicrously bungled attempts at murder and suicide and adultery. Perhaps these failures are what makes it feel the saddest and most truthful of these great tragi-comedies, in which, possibly unique to all drama, not a single word seems redundant or out of place. - From the authors introduction.

Drama Classics: The Worlds Great Plays at a Great Little PriceChekhovs masterpiece of provincial claustrophobia, translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine.Living in a provincial army barrack town, Olga, Masha and Irina are finding life dull and long for the vitality of Moscow. Meanwhile their brothers wife begins to take over their house and their lives.Anton Chekhovs play Three Sisters was first performed in 1901 at the Moscow Art Theatre.This translation by Stephen Mulrine, published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, was first staged by Bristol Old Vic and Out of Joint on tour in 1995.

Hear what I have to say about the cherry orchard, because it is mine. I say bring it down, tear it down. Smash it down and tear it down. Watch, watch. Just you watch. I will build holiday villas, as far as the eye can see. I will build a place for everyone to come and enjoy. For the future. And this will be the future. A new life. A new way of life. Here! Come now and play. Play. Play! Get the band to play.Ranyevskaya returns more or less bankrupt after ten years abroad. Luxuriating in her fading moneyed world and regardless of the increasingly hostile forces outside, she and her brother snub the lucrative scheme of Lopakhin, a peasant turned entrepreneur, to save the family estate. In so doing, they put up their lives to auction and seal the fate of the beloved orchard. Set at the very start of the twentieth century, The Cherry Orchard captures a poignant moment in Russias history as the country rolls inexorably towards 1917. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov in a version by Andrew Upton, premiered at the National Theatre, London, in May 2011.

Teas cold, lunch is late and the great Professor has turned out to be a fraud - for Uncle Vanya, life has gone wonky, its gone to hell. Only one thing can save him - a glamorous womans love. But shes not interested either. And whats worse, shes married to the Professor. Samuel Adamson new version of Anton Chekhovs Uncle Vanya - a dark and funny exploration of cross-purposed love, bitter jealousy and a dysfunctional family - opened at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, in February 2015.

Russia, late summer at the close of the nineteenth century. Vanya and his niece Sonya have worked for years to manage the country estate. Into this ordered and regular household come two new visitors, Sonyas father, an irritable professor, and his young wife Elena who, in the space of a few months, cause chaos, one by their selfishness, and the other by their sexual allure. Between them, they manage to have most of the inhabitants questioning their purpose in life, their happiness and, at times, their sanity. David Hares version of Anton Chekhovs Uncle Vanya opens at Theatre Royal Bath in July 2019.

Dont be miserable, you wonderful woman; be a mermaid. Theres the ocean; throw yourself in. Fall in love with some poor mortal and drag him down with you. Astonish us! On an isolated country estate, Sonia and her Uncle Vanya are committed to a life of ceaseless toil. But when the ageing invalid Serebriakov and his bewilderingly beautiful young wife take up residence, a yearning envelops the household and disturbs the accustomed tedium. Friend and confidant Astrov grows lovelorn, Sonias heart breaks and even Vanya falls under the spell. And so they fight, bond, belittle, lament, make peace and contemplate the odd murder. Featuring sex, comedy and unbearable sadness in nineteenth-century Russia, this version of Anton Chekhovs Uncle Vanya was written and directed by Terry Johnson and opened at Hampstead Theatre, London, in November 2018. And having weathered the storm, whats left? My feelings for you; a few droplets on a window pane, catching the sun, running down a way, drying to nothing.

A striking version of Chekhovs classic play, by Charlotte Pyke, John Kerr and Joseph Blatchley, restoring to the play the cuts demanded by the Russian censor in 1896.In nineteenth-century rural Russia, an anxious young writer prepares the first performance of his new play for the two women in his life. The consequences are devastating, with everybody in love with the wrong person, and death hovering close by.Through both comedy and tragedy, Seagull explores lives that are precariously balanced between love and indifference, success and failure, hope and despair.This version of Anton Chekhovs The Seagull was first performed at the Arcola Theatre, London, in 2011.

- Idea for a story. A beautiful young girl lives by a lake all her life. She loves this lake. Shes happy and free, like that bird was once. Then a man comes along and for no reason at all... what do you think he does?- He destroys her. A story about how we make stories, a story about unrequited love, The Seagull is one of the great plays of the modern era. Chekhov explores emotion and creativity with the clarity of a doctor and the heart of a poet. John Donnellys version of Anton Chekhovs The Seagull premiered in a Headlong and The Nuffield, Southampton co-production, in association with Derby Playhouse. The play opened in April 2013, followed by a UK tour.

This collection features Chekhovs best-known short plays in brand new translations: three farces, two comic duologues and a monologue, all of them referred to by Chekhov as vaudevilles and all written in the late 1880s before any of his great full-length plays. I dont much care for theatre, he wrote at the time, but I do enjoy vaudevilles.The Bear, The Proposal and The Wedding are all farces on the preposterous business of courtship and marriage. A Tragic Figure and Swansong are comic duologues: one about a civil servant sweltering in Moscow coping with the incessant demands of his family from their summer dacha, the other about a melancholy old actor perked up by memories of past glories. On the Evils of Tobacco is a bittersweet monologue in which a scientific lecture is hijacked by thoughts of domestic misery.These accurate and actable translations by Chekhov expert Stephen Mulrine reveal a dramatist revelling in the broad comedy of human behaviour, a comedy which was refined in his later masterpieces.Highly entertaining, these comic shorts offer a fascinating insight into Chekhovs development as a dramatist, and will provide actors at any level student, amateur or professional with an ideal showcase. This edition also includes an introduction, a chronology of key dates, and a pronunciation guide.

In the heat of summer, Sonya and her Uncle Vanya while away their days on a crumbling estate deep in the countryside, visited occasionally by the only local doctor Astrov.However, when Sonyas father, Professor Serebryakov, suddenly returns with his restless, alluring, new wife, declaring his intention to sell the house, the polite façades crumble and long-repressed feelings start to emerge with devastating consequences.Olivier Award-winner Conor McPhersons stunning adaptation of Anton Chekhovs masterpiece, Uncle Vanya, is a portrayal of life at the turn of the twentieth century, full of tumultuous frustration, dark humour and hidden passions. It premiered at the Harold Pinter Theatre in Londons West End in January 2020, directed by Ian Rickson.A film of the production, made by Sonia Friedman Productions/Angelica Films and shot on the stage of the Harold Pinter Theatre after the West End run was cut short due to the Covid-19 pandemic, was screened on BBC Four and went on to win the Theatre Award in the South Bank Sky Arts Awards 2021.

A collection of stories where action and drama are implied rather than described openly and which intend to leave much to the reader s imagination

OXFORD WORLD S CLASSICS: EARLY STORIES

On a visit to a provincial town to see his sister Nina who is suffering from cancer, Alexei Laptev, who works for his father''s Moscow haberdashery business, falls in love with Yulia, the daughter of her doctor, and proposes to her. Although she does not reciprocate his feelings, she agrees to marry him and live with him in the capital, where the couple''s relationship is marred by tensions: Yulia is filled with regrets about her choice and boredom with her new existence, while Alexei is nagged by the suspicion that she married him for his money alone. However, as time passes and misfortune strikes, they both learn to reassess all of their assumptions.Chekhov''s second-longest prose work after The Steppe, Three Years is, in the author''s own words, a novel of Moscow life and an examination of its merchant classes. A powerful story of redemption and the nuances of human relationships, the novella helped cement Chekhov''s reputation as a major figure in Russian literature.

"Three Sisters", as all of Chekhovs most popular plays, was written near the end of his life, in 1900. "Three Sisters" was the first play that Chekhov wrote specifically for the Moscow Art Theatre, having experienced commercial success in his previous collaborations with the company, "The Seagull" and "Uncle Vanya".The play is set in a small, remote town dominated by an army base. The action takes place in the Prozorov family home over a span of several years. Born and bred in a thriving metropolis, the Prozorovs came to this small town when their father was made commander of the local army brigade. Now, the Prozorov family consists of four siblings: Olga, Masha, Andrei and Irina, the youngest. Three sisters and one brother.Both of the Prozorovs parents have died. The mother many years ago; the father precisely one year earlier, on Irinas 21st birthday. Irinas 22nd birthday is thus also the first anniversary of her fathers death. Old family friends and acquaintances drop in on the family to mark the occasion.Amongst the visitors is Colonel Vershinin, the new brigade commander, who has only recently arrived in town and becomes a spark of new potential, particularly for Masha. Each act of the play moves forward in time, charting five years in the life of the town, its soldiers, the Prozorov household and its three sisters.The characters of "Three Sisters" are outstanding examples of Chekhovian boredom, longing, and listlessness. The playwright portrays the sisters social aspirations with sensitivity and irony, using them as emblems of Russian middle-class pretensions and despair.