Word: orchards
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Enthusiasm at Orchard Park...
Compared with this, his theatrical output was rather small. His eminence and influence have come, really, from only four plays--the last four: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. It is not correct, as often claimed, that Chekhov became interested in the theatre only in his last years. In his youth, in fact, he enjoyed quite a reputation as an actor in both professional and non-professional undertakings, which gave him a good deal of practical knowledge of the stage...
Almost everyone concedes that each of the last four Chekhov plays is a masterpiece, and hands the first prize to The Cherry Orchard. I happen to belong to the small group that views The Three Sisters as the summit of all Russian drama. (On Chekhov's own admission, it was the play that caused him the most trouble to perfect.) And this is the work that the American Shakespeare Festival has chosen to round out the current season, thus departing from the fifth time in its history...
...later, generations, and underlines the necessity of hard work and hope. The play has a moderately upbeat ending -- though many don't seem to realize it. The Three Sisters is not a tragedy (a label Chekhov never used: it, like Ivanov, is a "drama"; The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard are "comedy"; Uncle Vanya is called "scenes from country life"). The Three Sisters is two parts pathos and one part comedy. Much in the play is funny, much is witty--and Kahn has not let this get obscured...
...hard time doing without the conventional pistol shot, which was an important feature of every one of his plays through The Three Sisters. But here, for the first time, the pistol shot takes place way off in the distance. And only in his final play, The Cherry Orchard, is there no pistol--instead we hear the forlorn sound of a far-off axe chopping a tree as the curtain falls...