Word: chekhovs
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...stories are written in a firm, never brilliant, always individual style. In the sudden bite of his insights, Storyteller Stern somewhat suggests Chekhov, but Chekhov with his back teeth pulled. He bites, but he doesn't chew his ideas as fine as they deserve...
...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...
Crane's only esthetic creed was "honesty." He did much to release American fiction from the cocoon of euphemism and sentimentality. Technically, he was an Impressionist. Like Flaubert, Chekhov and James, he aimed for "the immediate sense of life, not the removed report." He himself never achieved that summit of craft where art appears to be artless. His oddly arresting similes and metaphors jut up like boulders deflecting the clear stream of his narratives. Many a sentence of Crane's is beaded with the sweat that went into its construction. Despite these deficiencies, his pages twang with...
...Chekhov has set his play in the familiar Russian provincial town. The action revolves around the three sisters, who house is a center of intelligence and education in this cultural backwash. The trouble for them and most of their friends is that intelligence and education simply enable them to see the appalling sterility of the rest of their friends, the town, and the whole country. This fills them with a proper Russian despair...
...Three Sisters" is a gloomy play, but it is good. Chekhov plays his mood for all it is worth, and at the same time manages to introduce quite a bit of sardonic humor. "The Three Sisters," however, is a play which needs expert handling; there is so much that could be overplayed. The Brattle Theatre has avoided the traps and turned out an excellent production...