Plays: Ivanov; The Seagull; Uncle Vanya; Three Sisters; The Cherryorchard (Penguin Classics)

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A Tragic Figure and Swansong are comic duologues: one about a civil servant sweltering in Moscow coping with the incessant demands of his family from their summer dacha, the other about a melancholy old actor perked up by memories of past glories. Where the tune is familiar and the end emphatic—lovers united, villains discomfited, intrigues exposed—as it is in most Victorian fiction, we can scarcely go wrong, but where the tune is unfamiliar and the end a note of interrogation or merely the information that they went on talking, as it is in Tchekov, we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony. These stories are inconclusive, we say, and proceed to frame a criticism based upon the assumption that stories ought to conclude in a way that we recognise. Chekhov, Anton, The Other Chekhov, edited by Okla Elliott and Kyle Minor, with story introductions by Pinckney Benedict, Fred Chappell, Christopher Coake, Paul Crenshaw, Dorothy Gambrell, Steven Gillis, Michelle Herman, Jeff Parker, Benjamin Percy, and David R. Brimming with subtext and complex character motivations, they require subtle nuisance and absolute detail from the actor for them to come to life.

In May 1903, Chekhov visited Moscow; the prominent lawyer Vasily Maklakov visited him almost every day. He thinks society is without ideas and principles, but is aware that he himself is very much part of that society. Other dramatic efforts of the period include several of the uproarious one-act farces known as vaudevilles: Medved ( The Bear), Predlozheniye ( The Proposal), Svadba ( The Wedding), Yubiley ( The Anniversary), and others. In a narrative that drifts with the thought processes of the characters, Chekhov evokes a chaise journey across the steppe through the eyes of a young boy sent to live away from home, and his companions, a priest and a merchant. In The Cherry Orchard, the characters expect the successful businessman Lopakhin, the son and grandson of serfs, to propose to Varya, the adopted daughter of impoverished aristocrats.Raymond Tallis further recounts that Vladimir Lenin believed his reading of the short story Ward No. Long said "Chekhov's characters were repugnant, and that Chekhov revelled in stripping the last rags of dignity from the human soul". Then, I suggest reading Robert Hingley's "Chekov's Russia" before actually starting the plays because it gives some vital context. There are also some interesting reflections on the emancipation of the serfs, with the ancient valet Firs having been against it as he valued the certainty of the old life.

Highly entertaining, these comic shorts offer a fascinating insight into Chekhov's development as a dramatist, and will provide actors at any level – student, amateur or professional – with an ideal showcase.Another Indian television series titled Chekhov Ki Duniya aired on DD National in the 1990s, adapting different works of Chekhov.