Tcg Classic Russian Drama
6 total works
Chekhov's treatment of theatre and love against the background of a magical lake attempts to define the role of the artist in the modern world. Plays for Performance Series.
Along with Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya is credited as one of Chekhov's masterpieces and a significant precursor of modern drama. Set on a country estate in late nineteenth century Russia, Uncle Vanya is in part a study of the enervation of Russian middle-class provincial life. The major dynamics between the characters themselves are centred on two obsessive love affairs that lead nowhere and a flirtation that brings disaster. Mixing the tragic and the absurd and dealing with a form that allows for ambiguity and contradiction, Uncle Vanya has been deemed "the first modernist play". (David Lan)
"Frayn's translation, which strikes me as splendidly lucid and alive...will be acted again and again" (New Statesman) In Chekhov's tragi-comedy - perhaps his most popular play - the Gayev family is torn by powerful forces deeply rooted in history and the society in which they live. Their estate is hopelessly in debt and when urged to cut down their beautiful cherry orchard and sell the land for holiday cottages, they are confronted by an impossible decision. "At the time when The Cherry Orchard was written, the years before the revolution of 1905, Chekhov considered revolution in Russia irreversible and desirable." (Melchinger: Anton Chekhov)
As an internationally acclaimed playwright who is also proficient in Russian, Michael Frayn is ideally placed to offer us a wholly accurate yet modern and playable translation of Chekhov's classic play. For this edition he has also provided a full introduction and a chronology of Chekhov's life and works. Michael Frayn's "ambition in translating the piece was to recreate for an English audience the naturalness and 'glancing eloquence' of the original, and I think he succeeds completely" Spectator Frayn's translation "is full of those little liberties and intimacies of ordinary speech which override grammar and syntax and betray moods of ordinary people and the impulses of the heart" Daily Telegraph
Once a man of great influence and means, Ivanov has fallen into debt and out of love with his wife. Spending his evenings away from home, amongst the idle and morally corrupt, Ivanov finds himself drawn to Sasha, the daughter of a wealthy friend, who appears determined to save him.
