Tsehhov daam koeraga Chekov Lady and the Lapdog
colossus of the age, Lev Tolstoy.
The Seagull [Chaika] suffered one of the most disastrous first nights of any of
Chekhov's plays when it opened in St Petersburg, in 1896, as a benefit night
for a comic actress who had a huge, rowdy, popular following. Chekhov ran
out of the theatre after the second act and roamed the streets, swearing never
to write for the stage again. Exactly two years later, the fledgling Moscow Arts
Theatre, under the guidance of Stanislavsky and Nemerovich-Danchenko,
began the first of twenty-six rehearsals of The Seagull. The director, Vladimir
Nemirovich-Danchenko, had recognised the potential of Chekhov's innovative
dramatic technique and it was his enthusiasm that ensured the first highly
successful production of the play.
Th e plot of Chekhov's sixteen-page masterpiece is not complicated. A man
meets a
woman while both are vacationing -- without their spouses -- in the southern
resort villa of Yalta
annaabi.ee 
