Word: chekhovs
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Revisionist drama has become the bane of the theater. It is merciful that Shakespeare, Chekhov and Aeschylus are not alive to view the bizarre "improvements" inflicted upon their classic works by the whims of directors like Peter Brook and Andrei Serban...
...blood flow of the play. The dramatist is presumed unable to capture the Id of his work in words, so the director imposes a distracting new subtext that blurs, blots out or mangles the real text. In The Cherry Orchard, earlier this season, Serban altered the living space of Chekhov's drama to a kind of surrealistic all-white silo in which Mme. Ranevskaya ricocheted around without any discern ible contact with her beloved home...
...THREE SISTERS by ANTON CHEKHOV...
...Chekhov is the poet laureate of the commonplace. He once wrote that "on the stage everything should be as complex and as simple as in life. People are having dinner, and while they're having it, their future happiness may be decided or their lives may be shattered." In presenting vivid, selective glimpses of ordinary life, Chekhov simultaneously plumbs the nature of existence with its brevity, hope, joy and sorrow. He is an impressionist rather than a photographer. In his plays we know that virtually nothing has happened, but we feel that much has been said...
...astonishingly versatile English director Frank Dunlop has maintained an admirably sane balance between the ironic lightness of Chekhov's comedy and the Stygian strain of his pathos. For the subtlest of comic relief, Dunlop could not have wished for anything better than that provided by Barnard Hughes as a compassionate, sodden and cheerily nihilistic regimental doctor. In serving Chekhov with unswerving fidelity, BAM adds another medal of honor to its growing collection...