Word: chekhovisms
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...Brattle Theater Company presented the second play of this (its first) winter season, last Wednesday night. It was Chekhov's "The Sea Gull," and appearing with the resident company was the celebrated Viennese actress, Luise Rainer. Chekhov, Miss Rainer, and the Brattle players have never been seen to better advantage by this reviewer. The Brattle Hall group, which in the past few years has done so much to raise the level of drama locally, deserves most special praise for introducing and re-introducing both Chekhov and Miss Rainer to this generation of theatergoers...
...Anton Chekhov chose to call this play a comedy, and we must accept his word for that, even though the tragic fate of the two young lovers does not comply with the conventional comedy ending. Perhaps the comic element in "The Sea Gull" lies in the irony of the young writer's rejection by his mother, his sweetheart, and his public; all three of whom take to their hearts an older writer the young regards as a hack. "The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to these who feel," is Herace Walpole's useful reminder...
...Chekhov is ideal material for a repertory group because so many of the smaller parts can prove to be gems when given the attention of first-class actors. In the present production, Peter Temple as the schoolmaster, Semyon, Donald Stevens as Sorin, and Jeanne Tufts as Polina are cases in point. Bryant Haliday as Konstantin, shows much improvement over his past tendency toward staginess and oratory and gives his best performance to date. Jan Farrand is ill-cast as the faded actress, Madame Arkadina. Despite all the trickery of the theater, Miss Farrand cannot look faded. And as the physical...
...cold eye, who finds himself bewildered because, though he knows he shouldn't be, he is unhappy. Another is an ugly, peevish, middle-aged nurse secretly in love with feeble Dr. Suprugov. The doctor himself, a weak, cunning, vain, lying, frightened creature, might have come out of Chekhov...
...best of Séan O'Faoláin's stories belong with those of Chekhov. This 48-year-old Irishman, born in Cork, fought in Ireland's Civil War and afterwards, in Midsummer Night Madness, wrote a series of haunting stories about it. They had the hard authenticity of firsthand pictures of war and revolution, with none of the drab, repetitious prose that is now almost a trademark of war novels. His themes were as subtle as Turgenev's, with clear and vivid pictures of action, but the distinction of his work was its fine...