I don't think anyone's done this project before.
The subtitle
you sort of see him becoming what we would now term
Chekhovian drama, but what's wonderful,
because we're doing it as part of a trilogy, you see the development of a writer.
Platonov
It's hardly ever done.
MICHAEL: The plot of
Michael Platonov, who has been to university,
was idealistic, wanted to run the world.
But like many people who think like that, he's reached the age of 27,
he's got a wife now and a child he has to support, so he's become a teacher.
He didn't actually finish his degree.
All his youthful idealism has gone, so he sort of feels he's sold out to life.
But Platonov has one thing he's good at —
and that's being completely irresistible to women.
By and large, I think he's transmitting the same underlying message
that he's conveying in his short stories,
which is, basically, to hold up a mirror to people and show them how they're living,
in the hope that they will grab life
and really live with a little bit more dignity and integrity.
It's still all human feelings and thoughts and conflicts
and characters that you immediately understand and you immediately relate to.
ROSAMUND: He was pretty much a loose cannon to begin with.
He was experimenting and in
he was just trying his hand.
By the time we get to
the third of these three plays, he's already a master.
The play
He's 35 and he's reached a point in his life
where he can't quite understand why he feels so depressed, basically.
The play really is dealing with depression and the illness of depression,
before such an illness was known and how it happens.
It's very much about reaching a point in your life, really,
being very lost and not knowing how to go on.
♪ MOURNFUL VIOLIN SOLO
The very first performance of it was a complete disaster.
Chekhov vowed never, ever, ever to write another play again.
It had gone that badly.
So it's very much ahead of its time.
You don't leave
I think people were probably going to the theatre to be entertained.
Chekhov was known as a short-story writer and a vaudeville writer.
Suddenly, they saw this play dealing with the human condition
and it was revolutionary — it must have been revolutionary.
However, people at the time didn't know it was revolutionary.
The Seagull
It's written at the end of the 19th century
and it's about Irina Arkadina.
She's a world-famous actress.
Arkadina's been away, acting, and she comes back one summer with her new lover,
Trigorin, who's a very famous writer.
But her son, Konstantin, also wants to be a writer,
but he wants to do revolutionary writing.
He wants to make new forms of theatre and he's written a play.
He gets his girlfriend, Nina, from the neighbouring estate, to act in his play.
The play begins when they are going to show the assembled company his new play.
But it goes terribly wrong because his mother, Arkadina, mocks the play
and says it's not very good because she likes more traditional work.
Melodramatic elements that are in both those earlier plays
are slowly working their way out.
Chekhov starts writing about a group of people, more of an ensemble
and the writing sort of becomes more formed.
He, basically, dismantles every aspect of conventional drama,
certainly Russian plays as they were:
The idea of a hero and a heroine;
the plot of how a play should begin and end;
whether you actually have good characters or bad characters.
Almost everything is up-ended in the Chekhov play.
People have described Chekhov's plays almost as if they're documentaries
because they seem so realistic.
JOSHUA: It was the first play
that relied on a naturalistic style of acting,
rather than a melodramatic style of acting,
where you would kind of declaim and just speak very loudly.
It was the first play that required nuance and subtlety on the part of the actors.
It was interesting going to Russia,
going to the theatre where
and hearing about it being such a flop.
And Chekhov saying that he would never write again
when critics completely slated the production.
I think that...
..perhaps people at the time weren't ready to see that level of...
truthful pain on stage.
MICHAEL: What's special about Chekhov, I think, and what makes him a genius,
is he just understands what it is to be human.