Ivanov

by Anton Chekhov, Yasen Payankon (Translator), Peter Christensen (Translator)

Overview

Treads a fine line between broad comedy and tragic melodrama.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566634090
Publisher:	Dee, Ivan R. Publisher
Publication date:	10/02/2001
Series:	Plays for Performance Series
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 8.52(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian doctor, short-story writer, and playwright. Born in the port city of Taganrog, Chekhov was the third child of Pavel, a grocer and devout Christian, and Yevgeniya, a natural storyteller. His father, a violent and arrogant man, abused his wife and children and would serve as the inspiration for many of the writer’s most tyrannical and hypocritical characters. Chekhov studied at the Greek School in Taganrog, where he learned Ancient Greek. In 1876, his father’s debts forced the family to relocate to Moscow, where they lived in poverty while Anton remained in Taganrog to settle their finances and finish his studies. During this time, he worked odd jobs while reading extensively and composing his first written works. He joined his family in Moscow in 1879, pursuing a medical degree while writing short stories for entertainment and to support his parents and siblings. In 1876, after finishing his degree and contracting tuberculosis, he began writing for St. Petersburg’s Novoye Vremya, a popular paper which helped him to launch his literary career and gain financial independence. A friend and colleague of Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, and Ivan Bunin, Chekhov is remembered today for his skillful observations of everyday Russian life, his deeply psychological character studies, and his mastery of language and the rhythms of conversation.

Editorial Reviews

The director wanted 'a language that would sound, in the mouths of American actors, as fresh and vivid as the original Russian.' Schmidt succeeds. Slang and modern idiom are woven almost seamlessly into the script.

Time Out (San Francisco)

Schmidt's translation has a lean, sharp, sorrowfully funny style...

Sacramento Bee

A play often patronised as an immature melodrama, one that Chekhov himself described as "a pudding", has the quirkiness, the subtlety, the unpredictable touches of human truth we associate with the great works that followed.” —Benedict Nightingale, The Times

“...as intimate and subtly plotted as a piece of chamber music” —Rachel Halliburton, The Evening Standard

“A dazzling cabaret that brings tears to the cheek” —The Evening Standard

From the Publisher

"Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English."

New Yorker