Chekhov
The setting is a country property somewhere in parched wheatbelt Australia. It is a four-hour drive from the city, with patchy phone reception. In Andrew Upton’s adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull, the character’s names remain the same, but we find Irina, Constantin, and Boris et al. in twenty-first-century Australia, dealing with mozzies and moaning about the internet, or lack thereof.
... (read more)In 1881, armed with the confidence of youth, the twenty-one-year-old Anton Pavlovich Chekhov fronted up to the Maly Theatre in Moscow, at that time one of the foremost theatres in the world, in order to present its leading actress, Maria Yermolova, with a copy of his recently written and probably first play. The great lady promptly returned the manuscript, whi ...