The Seagull, Anton Chekhov | John Russell Brown (essay date 1993)
John Russell Brown (essay date 1993)
SOURCE: Brown, John Russell. “Chekhov on the British Stage: Differences.” In Chekhov on the British Stage, edited and translated by Patrick Miles, pp. 6-19. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
[In the following essay, Brown examines how The Seagull and Chekhov's other plays have been interpreted on the British stage.]
Productions of Chekhov's plays in Britain provide yearly proof of this dramatist's wide and lasting influence. But a look behind the playbills will reveal more—that these plays have affected the British sense of what theatre can be. In performance they reinforce a persistent belief that the stage can hold a mirror up to life, and clarify the very forms and pressures of present-day existence.
During the last 350 years, no other dramatist writing in a language that is not English has seemed to speak in Britain with such assurance, or to use means that are so...
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