Seagull

Front Cover
Nick Hern Books, 2011 - Drama - 76 pages
"In nineteenth-century rural Russia, an anxious young writer prepares the first performance of his new play for the two women in his life. The consequences are devastating, with everybody in love with the wrong person, and death hovering close by. Through both comedy and tragedy, 'Seagull' explores lives that are precariously balanced between love and indifference, success and failure, hope and despair. This new translation of Chekhov's classic play--by Charlotte Pyke, John Kerr and Joseph Blatchley--restores the cuts demanded by the Russian censor in 1896. It premiered at London's Arcola Theatre in 2011, directed by Blatchley, with a cast featuring Geraldine James and Roger Lloyd Pack"--Publisher's description, back cover.

About the author (2011)

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the provincial town of Taganrog, Ukraine, in 1860. In the mid-1880s, Chekhov became a physician, and shortly thereafter he began to write short stories. Chekhov started writing plays a few years later, mainly short comic sketches he called vaudvilles. The first collection of his humorous writings, Motley Stories, appeared in 1886, and his first play, Ivanov, was produced in Moscow the next year. In 1896, the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg performed his first full- length drama, The Seagull. Some of Chekhov's most successful plays include The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and Three Sisters. Chekhov brought believable but complex personalizations to his characters, while exploring the conflict between the landed gentry and the oppressed peasant classes. Chekhov voiced a need for serious, even revolutionary, action, and the social stresses he described prefigured the Communist Revolution in Russia by twenty years. He is considered one of Russia's greatest playwrights. Chekhov contracted tuberculosis in 1884, and was certain he would die an early death. In 1901, he married Olga Knipper, an actress who had played leading roles in several of his plays. Chekhov died in 1904, spending his final years in Yalta. Charlotte Pyke is an actress and translator. She has translated several Russian plays, including The Seagull (as Seagull ) for the Arcola, The Government Inspector, Philistines and The White Guard for the National Theatre; Enemies, The Suicide and The Bath-House for the Almeida Theatre; and Uncle Vanya for Presence Theatre Company. As an actress she trained at the St Petersburg Academy of Dramatic Art, and LAMDA. Theatre includes: Philistines and Burnt by the Sun (National Theatre) Television includes: Spooks, A Single Father, Heartbeat, Holby City and The Bill. Joseph Blatchley is an actor and director who has worked extensively in the theatre, film and television in England and France, working with Tony Richardson, Nick Roeg, Bill Douglas, François Truffaut and Peter Brook. He studied film-making at the National Film and Television School. His short film Fragments has been shown in many festivals, and won 'Outstanding Film of the Year' at the London Film Festival. He has directed all of Chekhov's major plays, including his own adaptation of Platonov. He has directed over seventy plays. In England his productions have included plays at LAMDA, GSMD, DCL, RADA, Hampstead Theatre, the White Bear Theatre, the Gate Theatre, Riverside Studios and Royal Exchange, Manchester.

Bibliographic information