Word: chekhov
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Despite its manifold wit and moments of wisdom, the plotless Heartbreak House drifts along with its people, and at times reflects their languor. This is partly because Shaw's ante-bellum England is not in itself a theme, but only a framework for one. Where Chekhov portrayed something dramatic, the death-indeed the suicide-of a class, Shaw caught, at most, the malaise of a country. Moreover, his characters are all so busy explaining what they suffer from that though they convey a forcible sense of diagnosis, they give off only the most feeble sense of disease...
Broadway these days seems a strait-laced street, solemn with young Method actors mooning over Chekhov and Freud, censored by Actors Equity, censured by critics. Little is heard to compare with the 19th century chores of young Edwin Booth, who led his father, Junius Brutus Booth, staggering from the corner saloon; or Stella Campbell, who turned her back on Sir Beerbohm Tree so often that he ran screaming from the stage. But last week Broadway's most spectacular feline feud in years had the whole street on edge. The clawing started when gifted Actress Kim (Bus Stop) Stanley abruptly...
Died. Olga Knipper-Chekhova, 89, widow of Anton Chekhov (who called her "my little crocodile"), Moscow Art Theater actress for 40 years; in Moscow...
Separate Tables. A Chekhov situation, without the Chekhov truths, brings half a dozen warped and lonely characters together in an English seaside boardinghouse. The parts provided by Playwright Terence Rattigan, a master illusionist, are well acted by Rita Hayworth, Deborah Kerr, Burt Lancaster, David Niven, Wendy Killer and Gladys Cooper...
...their best, the stories are filled with the continuing Russian love of the vast land: there are hard gallops through Caucasian meadows, hunters' frosty dawns, quiet hours in the white nights and birch woods of the north. Without the skill of such masters as Turgenev and Chekhov, the Soviet writers are still modestly working in the same vein of common humanity and still echo the old wonder of life, as when an aged wanderer in Loaf Sugar sighs: "It's a pity to die, to go away from people's kindness. Ooh, what a pity...