Word: chekhovisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When one attends a Chekhov play, one does not, strictly speaking, go to the theater. One drops in on life. No stethoscope is needed to detect the heartbeat of existence. Chekhov may be the best imaginable argument for a playwright's having some other occupation...
...Khrushchev's reminiscences [Dec. 7], you report an odd linguistic controversy about the proper affectionate and intimate variation of the name Svetlana in Russian. Nikita Khrushchev says Stalin called his daughter Svetlanka. But in Russian the ending nka is usually used in talking to pets, as in Anton Chekhov's story about the dog Kashtanka. Stalin's daughter says her father always called her Svetochka. Since Stalin, the author of Marxism and Linguistics, fancied himself an expert on the Russian language, as on everything else, it still may be hard to argue with...
...date-Sam Shepherd, 19, ex-furrier's apprentice, son of a docker and star of a low-budget film called Bronco Bullfrog. To protest his movie's removal from a London theater to make room for the premiere of Laurence Olivier's version of Chekhov's The Three Sisters, Sam had dropped Anne a line, asking her to see it with him. While waiting for her at the cinema, Sam fortified himself at the next-door pub with two pints of bitter and a rum-and-Coke. Wasn't he nervous? "She's like...
Nevertheless, Mary does show a great deal of talent. Ganin's sweet memories of pre-Revolution Russia and of his love encounters there with Mary are very promising. The sense of intimacy and sadness is worthy of Chekhov. Your descriptions of the countryside would have been the envy of Turgenev. May I commend you especially on the book's inventiveness and control. Having the depressed Ganin find new vitality through his memories while awaiting Mary's arrival from the Soviet Union creates a natural suspense of great force. Making Mary the wife of a bland squirt...
...easy rapport of these obviously experienced players-now in their fifth season-with the seemingly bogus spiritual communion of the Loeb actors in last year's Grotowski experiment, The Three Sisters. Grotowski's method was salient throughout the production, but it didn't add to (frequently detracted from) Chekhov's script. If animal magnetism caused the players to embrace each other at the end of the play, their frantic hugging gave the audience at least an emblem of deep feelings which, purely as artists, they were unable to make the audience share...