|
Showing 1 - 25 of
390 matches in All Departments
|
The Seagull (Paperback)
Jean-Claude Van Itallie; Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
|
R315
Discovery Miles 3 150
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
In this, his third adaptation of a Chekhov play, Pulitzer
Prize-winning author David Mamet offers a contemporary, highly
accessible version of Chekhov's The Three Sisters. Working from a
literal translation by Vlada Chernomordik, Mamet has rediscovered
the characteristically modern chords in this powerful play and
breathes new life into a timeless classic. This is Chekhov rendered
in direct, colloquial language marked by Mamet's finely tuned ear
for dialogue.
The play focuses on the lives of three sisters, Olga, Masha, and
Irina, young women of the Russian gentry who try to fill their days
in order to construct a life that feels meaningful while surrounded
by an array of military men, servants, husbands, suitors, and
lovers, all of whom constitute a distraction from the passage of
time and from the sisters' desire to return to their beloved
Moscow.
"Mamet's ear is famously impeccable, the dialogue is always
authentic and convincing.... This adaptation] will help to
undermine our silly critical notions of 'definitive' Chekhov. Mamet
has made me rethink the play," said Robert Brustein in The New
Republic of Mamet's adaptation of The Cherry Orchard. And the
Chicago-Sun Times called it "audacious, consistently arresting."
Anton Chekhov's short novels are here brought together in one
volume for the first time, in a masterly new translation by the
award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.
Chekhov, widely hailed as the supreme master of the short story,
also wrote five works long enough to be called short novels. "The
Steppe-the most lyrical of the five-is an account of a
nine-year-old boy's frightening journey by wagon train across the
steppe of southern Russia to enroll in a distant school. "The Duel
sets two decadent figures-a fanatical rationalist and a man of
literary sensibility-on a collision course that ends in a series of
surprising reversals. In "The Story of an Unknown Man, a political
radical plans to spy on an important official by serving as valet
to his son, however, as he gradually becomes involved as a silent
witness in the intimate life of his young employer, he finds that
his own terminal illness has changed his long-held priorities in
startling ways. "Three Years recounts a complex series of ironies
in the personal life of a rich but passive Moscow merchant,
engaging time as a narrative element in a way unusual in Chekhov's
fiction. In "My Life, a man renounces wealth and social position
for a life of manual labor, and the resulting conflict between the
moral simplicity of his ideals and the complex realities of human
nauture culminates in an apocalyptic vision that is unique in
Chekhov's work.
In these five short novels, Chekhov's masterful storytelling and
his profound understanding of human nature are brilliantly evinced.
"From the Hardcover edition.
|
Platonov (Paperback, Main)
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov; Adapted by David Hare; Translated by David Hare
|
R365
Discovery Miles 3 650
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
In 1997, the celebrated contemporary playwright David Hare adapted a little-known play called Ivanov, and in doing so revealed the young Chekhov as a markedly different writer from the one English-speaking audiences were familiar with. Now Hare has produced a streamlined new version of Chekhov's freshman drama Platonov, an abandoned seven-hour manuscript in which Chekhov recasts Don Juan as a Russian schoolmaster. Again, we encounter a great writer who is funnier, more exuberant, and more wildly romantic than anyone expected.
|
|