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Michael Frayn has left his signature upon our contemporary enjoyment of Chekhov...this Uncle Vanya possesses all the scrupulous, subtly idiomatic life we have come to expect from his hand, allied with - and this is the true mark of Frayn - a fine sense of Chekhovian complexity. Informationen zum Autor Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. He has written seventeen plays, including Noises Off, Copenhagen , and Democracy , translated Chekhov’s last four plays, and adapted his first as Wild Honey. His screenplays include Clockwise , starring John Cleese, and among his eleven novels are The Tin Men , Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong , Spies , and Skios . Collections of articles include Collected Columns , Stage Directions , and Travels with a Typewriter. He has also published two philosophical works, Constructions and The Human Touch , and a memoir, My Father’s Fortune. His most recent publications are three collections of short entertainments, Matchbox Theatre, Pocket Playhouse , and Magic Mobile. He is married to the writer Claire Tomalin. Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian physician, dramatist and author, is considered to be one of the greatest writers of short stories and modern drama. Born in Taganrog, a port town near the Black Sea, he attended medical school at Moscow University. He began writing to supplement his income, writing short humorous sketches of contemporary Russian life. A successful literary careered followed, before his premature death of TB at the age of 44. He is best-remembered for his four dramatic masterpieces: The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1899), Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904). Klappentext Along with Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard , Uncle Vanya is credited as one of Chekhov's masterpieces and a significant precursor of modern drama. Set on a country estate in late nineteenth century Russia, Uncle Vanya is in part a study of the enervation of Russian middle-class provincial life. The major dynamics between the characters themselves are centred on two obsessive love affairs that lead nowhere and a flirtation that brings disaster. Mixing the tragic and the absurd and dealing with a form that allows for ambiguity and contradiction, Uncle Vanya has been deemed "the first modernist play". (David Lan)A masterpiece of Russian theatre, this student edition features the definitive translation by acclaimed playwright Michael Frayn. Methuen Student Editions are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays. Contains the complete text of the play, the volume contains a chronology of the playwright's life and work; an introduction giving the background to the play; a discussion of various interpretations; and notes on individual words and phrases in the textA masterpiece of Russian drama, now in a student edition Zusammenfassung A masterpiece of Russian drama, now in a student edition...
