Word: chekhovian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...responsible for televising-this mildly Chekhovian drama: Producer Charles Russell, 32, and Director Sidney Lumet, 27. As ex-actors (Lumet was a child player in the 1935 Broadway hit, Dead End), they are more interested in character than plot, and Danger is chiefly distinguished for fine camera work, the haunting theme music of Guitarist Tony Mottola, and a leaning toward psychological melodrama. Disconcerted by the response to The Lady on the Rock, Russell & Lumet may call a halt to further experiments in realism, get back in the groove with the uncomplicated mayhem and murder that are the staple...
...Miss Hellman's real emphasis is on separate frustrations and intimate crises, so that a Southern comedy of manners is always rubbing elbows with a Chekhovian study of character. And The Autumn Garden has the relaxed Chekhov method without his unifying lyrical mood-his sense that if people delude themselves, life is itself delusive. Actually Chekhov cuts deeper than Miss Hellman because, being a realist rather than a moralist, he very seldom grants his characters the ability to face the truth about themselves...
...play is also paced so slowly as to seem not leisurely but monotonous. And its texture turns curiously coarse at times, its curtains much too emphatic. Yancy Loper, the conquering parvenu, is conventionalized into an ardent suitor for Lucy's hand; while the profoundly Chekhovian ending, with the old servant thoughtlessly locked up in the deserted house, was dropped during the tryout because audiences seemed "angered...