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. Th ey have an aff air and return to their respective spouses -- he to his wife in Moscow, she to her husband in Saratov. While at fi rst the
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