On opening night, after the first act the curtain fell on silence-the lead actress was near tears-then, suddenly, there was a salvo of applause. Two years later, at the Moscow Art Theatre, in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavsky, the play’s fortune was reversed. Recounting the play’s sensational failure-the humiliated author stopped writing plays for a few years-Chekhov wrote to a friend, “The theatre breathed malice, the air was compressed with hatred, and in accordance with the laws of physics, I was thrown out of Petersburg like a bomb.” Chekhov asked for the play to be withdrawn the theatre refused.
Petersburg, in October, 1896, the hubbub of catcalls was so loud that the actors had trouble hearing themselves. When Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull” first opened in St.
Mackenzie Crook, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Peter Sarsgaard in Chekhov’s un-love triangle.
0 kommentar(er)
