“I don’t like the theatre, I can’t stand the actors.”. Guess who said that? Only one of the greatest playwrights ever to walk the earth. I’ve often thought it was a good thing Anton Chekhov takes the form of an evening spent in the company of the Russian writer towards the end of his life. In it he reminisces about his life, his times and work; he tells stories, speaks about the theatre and engages deeply and humorously with his English audience. Anton Chekhov was also a doctor so he knew he could always give it all up and go back to medicine if the actors annoyed him too much, although he did manage to marry one. He gave up writing plays after the failure of his first, The Seagull, and was tempted back by meeting the director Konstantin Stanislavsky, who promptly directed it in a better production at his Moscow Art Theatre. If he hadn’t, neither that play nor any of the subsequent masterpieces – The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, etc – might ever have been written.
