The Cherry Orchard

by Anton Chekhov, Benedict Andrews (Adapted by)

Overview

Classic of world drama concerns the passing of the old semifeudal order in turn-of-the-century Russia, symbolized in the sale of the cherry orchard owned by Madame Ranevskaya. The work also showcases Chekhov's rich sensitivities as an observer of human nature. This inexpensive, high-quality edition, reprinted from a standard edition of the play, will provide theater students and any lover of great drama with a reliable text of this masterpiece.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350501720
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/07/2024
Series:	Modern Plays
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.06(w) x 7.81(h) x 0.18(d)

About the Author

Anton Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860 in Taganrog, Russia. He graduated from the University of Moscow in 1884. Chekhov died of tuberculosis in Germany on July 14, 1904, shortly after his marriage to actress Olga Knipper, and was buried in Moscow.

Laurence Senelick is the Fletcher Professor of Drama and Oratory at Tufts University and author of more than a dozen books, including the award-winning The Chekhov Theatre and The Changing Room: Sex, Drag, and the Theatre. He is director of his own translations of Gogol’s The Inspector General (1998) and Euripides’ The Bakkhai (2001).

What People are Saying About This

James Parer

"Carnicke's Cherry Orchard is direct, easily accessible to young American students, and mercifully free of all that blather that mucks up so much of the other versions that I know." --(James Parker, Late Professor of Theatre, Virginia Commonwealth University)

Editorial Reviews

Jean-Claude van Itallie's adaptation is splendid, colloquial without being cute, simple, moving, funny.

Village Voice

I don't think I have ever seen anything quite like this production on a stage before—I left the Beaumont exhilarated.

NY Times

...a new, faithful, very playable and gorgeous translation by Jean-Claude van Itallie.

NY Post

"Senelick . . . has done his job as scholar and translator nearly to perfection."

Weekly Standard

Rory Mullarkey's poetical, darkly funny but never murky adaptation proves stimulating and surprising . . . makes you laugh one moment and shudder the next” —Times on The Oresteia

“The verse rhythms are fluid and flexible, allowing for passages of lyric song, and the language is pithy and vivid . . . shows how "justice" - the word that resounds through Mullarkey's text like a drumbeat - easily transmutes into blood-soaked revenge.” —The Guardian on The Oresteia

“There are ticklish jokes and moments of enjoyable mischief...” —Evening Standard on Saint George and the Dragon

From the Publisher

"Mr. Karam’s plays aren’t tearful, but they are often about loss—of love, of health, of innocence—and the messy, haphazard, necessary ways we get on with our lives afterward . . . He specializes in painful comedies that really shouldn’t be as funny as they are. Karam is a mature writer, very much in command of his gifts."

New York Times

"The more you see Anton Chekhov’s final play, the weirder it seems . . . The Cherry Orchard contains distinctly bizarre touches: unexplained offstage noises, ominous portents of revolution, and a morbid ending that's nearly Beckettian . . . Adapter Stephen Karam layers American accents (racial and immigration anxieties) into his lean, accessible script."

Time Out Magazine

"Stephen Karam is among the very best of his generation of playwrights."

New York Magazine