Farewell to the Theatre

"I am normally wary of any new play that could be called 'Chekhovian' it implies something fragile and wispily atmospheric. But Richard Nelson's extraordinary play about the pioneering playwright-director Harley Granville Barker combines a command of realistic detail with a sense of suffering and loss that genuinely evokes the Russian master. As in many of his previous plays, such as Some Americans Abroad, Nelson deals with cultural collision. In this instance, Granville Barker finds himse...