Customer Reviews

Chekhov: The Major Plays

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Van Itallie's translations of Chekhov have been around since the late 1970s, but are now in a fine paperback version by Applause Books. His translation of Chekhov is right up there with those of Paul Schmidt's. I have been using Van Itallie's translations with my senior English students and they have found a lightness and clarity in Chekhov's plays (especially The Seagull) that is sometimes missing in earlier translations (Fen's, Dunnigan's, and Garnett's). I highly recommend this translation.

While other Amazon.com reviewers of Chekhov's plays have been concerned with the quality of the translation, I would like to place my emphasis on the quality of the plays. These four great plays: The Sea Gull, The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, and Uncle Vanya represent some of the most influential drama written at the turn of the twentieth century; their impact on the development of modern theater is well documented.

Chekhov brought drama out of its conventional Victorian setting and made human character the pivotal point of his work. Plot becomes secondary and what is important is how the various characters respond to situations which usually take place off stage. There are no convenient denouements or deus ex machinas with Checkhov. His characters are flesh and blood and do not undergo dramatic character changes during the play; they are usually the same at the end of the play as they were at the beginning.

Common threads run through these four plays. The dramas are set in provencial Russia with the recurring theme of a longing for a life that is just out of the reach of its characters. Especially moving is the masterful Three Sisters in which the sisters become more and more certain that their dream of returning to Moscow is never to be realized, and that they will spend the rest of their lives in an isolated garrison town where their talents will never be recoginized. Also, for the first time that I am aware, nature is given central stage. Chekhov takes his plays out of the drawing room and sets them in nature with detailed set descriptions describing the time of day and the nature of the weather - all of which gives his plays a palpable realism.

As the "translator" himself admits (as he pompously plugs the fact that he is associated with elite and narrow institutions such as Harvard and Princeton), he doesn't even know Russian. Ah, but that's OKAY, because some guy gave him a "literal translation" from which he could "become" Chekhov. The translator admits that he was never really interested in the writer, and his commentary is pretty superficial. He thinks of Chekhov as "an old uncle," as an old fashioned writer who might serve some historical purpose (we'll leave it for the schmucks at Yale to decide!). He revises his "translation" many times to fit the "evolving tones of language." The translator continuously writes things like "Chekhov is like me because he knew a little French." One can easily glean where the translator's real interest is - in himself. This translation might be good for readers looking for a book by Van Italie, but one must search elsewhere to find Chekhov. I was very disappointed that I bought this without flipping through the pages. Let this be a lesson: ANYONE will try to translate something these days, such is the nature of human vanity in the modern age. Therefore: Please buy my new translations of Rilke. I will sell them to you at a ridiculous price and only edit parts of the poems that are no good in my opinion, leaving the rest for Harvard undergraduates to mill over and screw up.

This edition claims to have "the major plays". And yet, when one investigates, where are all the plays? Yes, four major ones are indeed included, but the fifth, "Ivanov" is left forgotten. While this is perhaps a good thing ("Ivanov" is difficult to understand at times, and is complex), it is also a grand disappointment.

Plays in general have a tendency to be overly-dramatic. Thus the name "drama". Chekhov definitely used this drama aspect to enhance his plays. He succeeded with some, making them dramatic, awe-inspiring, and amazing. Others? Less so.

I enjoyed reading all of these plays, and I won't deny that. Some, however, are harder to read and to understand than others. It's especially difficult to remember what character is which in each play. While good plays themselves, I constantly had to flip back to the character list just to remember who that is, a problem rarely found in other plays, such as Ibsen's works.

The plays themselves are good. Each one has its own charm and interest. They're a pleasant read, but a difficult one. It's not something you can just breeze through. Reading these plays needs time and effort, which may be too much for some. If you're looking for any old Chekhov, settle for his stories, like "Ward number six", or even his short little stories. If you're looking for plays (not Shakespeare, that is), go for Ibsen. If you think you can handle this, take it on, but be warned that this is not an easy read.

This could be considered a reasonable buy, and yet it can't, really. This edition, offering only four plays as opposed to the (barely) more common five cannot be considered to house the "major" works. That it costs more is an outright disgust. While perhaps these are the plays the editors felt would be better to provide the public with, this is not a complete edition and probably not worth it.

Approach with caution.

Living in Russia it is hard to avoid reading Chekhov. He is considered Russia's best playwright, and a foreigner in Russia is not considered to be truly educated in Russian culture until he reads Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, and The Three Sisters. This book sat on my shelf for close to two years before I finally sat down and read it. Somehow I knew it would be a struggle, and one not worth the effort. And I was certainly right.

Uncle Vanya is one of the worst plays ever written. It is awkward, stilted, and boring. Since it is only about 60 pages, it doesn't really have a chance to build up any kind of dramatic tension - not that it would have been any better had it been twice as long. The characters are forgettable, and the plot is stale.

The Cherry Orchard is slightly better, but not much. First of all, it is labeled as a comedy. I have no idea what exactly is funny about a woman who left her country after losing both her husband and her son within a month of each other, and returned five years later so financially ruined that she was forced to sell her estate.

The Three Sisters is probably the best of his works, but that's not saying much. Here, at least, there is a truly wicked character - someone to root against in the absence of someone to root for. But despite the predictably sad ending, the play is not a tragedy. It's just a real downer. Whereas a good tragedy will tweak at your heart, this play just leaves you feeling dirty.

The sad thing about Chekhov's plays is that there are no heroes, no loveable characters, no one to root for. They are perhaps of minor interest in the sense that they reflect something of Russian culture and society at the time - the beginning of the fall of the landed aristocracy, the bitterness and difficulty of life, etc. But that doesn't make up for the fact that this is bad writing, pure and simple.