‘I’m having absolutely nothing to do with the theatre or the human race. They can all go to hell.’ – Anton Chekhov During the turmoil of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Maria Chekhov, Anton’s sister, placed many of her late brother’s manuscripts and papers in a safety deposit box in Moscow. In 1921 Soviet scholars opened the box, and discovered a play. The title page was missing. The play they found has too many characters, too many themes, too much action. All in all, it’s generally dismissed as unstageable. Like life. A new play by Dead Centre, creators of the OBIE / Fringe First winning LIPPY.

"Platonov" is the title given to the English version of an 1878 unnamed play by Checkhov about a disillusioned and philandering provincial schoolmaster.

Discover the early works of the youthful Dr. Chekhov, whose passion for his two warring muses, comedy and tragedy, is nowhere more evident than in his first three-full length plays, Platanov, Ivanov, and The Wood Demon. These works are assembled in this third volume of the complete plays of Anton Chekhov, newly translated by Carol Rocamora and published in honor of Chekhov's centennial. Platonov, Chekhov's earliest, rarely translated play is adapted by Rocamora from its original, six-hour long, unfinished state into a playable comedy about a Russian Don Juan who copes with his boredom and ennui by victimizing every woman in the district. Ivanov, Chekhov's incarnation of the Russian Hamlet, is a marvel of a character study which has challenged actors from John Gielgud to Ralph Fiennes to Kevin Kline. And finally, The Wood Demon, Chekhov's earlier, comedic version of his masterpiece, Uncle Vanya. Actors, directors and lovers of Chekhov's plays will delight in discovering many of the settings, characters, and themes that later appear in his four major works. Theatres will find three exciting full-length plays infrequently performed in the United States which merit renewed attention.

Anton Chekhov's popularity in the west is without parallel for a foreign writer. He has been absorbed into our culture, and accepted as one of our own. His plays lend themselves easily to the stage, calling for actors with intelligence and common sense rather than a dramatic voice or histrionic skills.

Eminent critic Richard Gilman examines each of Chekhov's full-length plays, showing how they relate to each other, to Chekhov's short stories, and to his life. Gilman places the plays in the context of Russian and European drama and the larger culture of the period, and the reasons behind the enduring power of these classic works.

THE STORY: PLATONOV is Chekhov’s first play, and it went unproduced during his lifetime. Finding himself on a downward spiral fueled by lust and alcohol, Platonov proudly adopts as his motto “speak ill of everything.” A shining example of the chaos that reigned in his era, Platonov is a Hamlet whose father was never murdered, a Don Juan who cheats on his wife and his mistress, and the hero of the as-yet unwritten great Russian novel of his day.

The play focuses on the lives of three sisters, Olga, Masha, and Irina, young women of the Russian gentry who try to fill their days in order to construct a life that feels meaningful while surrounded by an array of military men, servants, husbands, suitors, and lovers, all of whom constitute a distractions from the passage of time and from the sisters' desire to return to their beloved Moscow.