Anton Chekhov (review)

Rose Whyman's Anton Chekhov is a superb addition to the Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatists series, and is an excellent resource for students at all levels of experience interested in learning about the theatre of Chekhov. Whyman's focus on plays and productions is particularly timely, as the best English-language books devoted exclusively to Chekhov and released over the past decade have focused either on his life (Rosamund Bartlett's Chekhov: Scenes from a Life, 2004), his life and works viewed through a psychoanalytic perspective (Michael Finke's Seeing Chekhov: Life and Art, 2005), or his cultural status in contemporary Russia (Lyudmila Parts's The Chekhovian Intertext: Dialogue with a Classic, 2008). While each of these studies offers important perspectives on the author, none focuses exclusively on his entire theatrical output, nor do they explicate theatrical productions with the same detail. Anton Chekhov is certainly useful for the scholar who is generally interested in Chekhov, but it is clearly written for researchers, teachers, and practitioners as interested in performance as they are in dramatic literature.

Anton Chekhov is organized into two sections, the first of which provides important context by examining the author's life and times, as well as his larger body of literary work. Section 1 includes two chapters, "Life, Context, and Ideas" and "Chekhov's Art and Worldview," respectively. The author's extensive citations show an easy familiarity with the key English and Russian studies on the author over the past century, and her overview provides a detailed primer for further research into Chekhov's many facets. Whyman's prose is also very easy to follow and her detailed study should be immediately accessible to undergraduate students, especially those who are used to skimming less-than-scholarly websites for basic information. So students really get the best of both worlds with this book: the accomplished scholarship of a careful and credible researcher, combined with the engaging and readable style of a talented author. Anton Chekhov is the ideal introduction (or re-introduction) to both the author and his works.

In the second section, Whyman rightly devotes a significant amount of space to Chekhov's major plays: The Seagull (chapter 4), Uncle Vanya (chapter 5), Three Sisters (chapter 6), and The Cherry Orchard (chapter 7), while also including treatments of his lesser-known works, including his early vaudeville-style routines and one-acts (chapter 3), Ivanov (chapter 4), and his early "draft" of Vanya, known as The Wood Demon (chapter 5). Even though Chekhov's dramatic output was relatively limited, it is still rare to see his entire body of work addressed in more recent scholarship, and Whyman has done a great service in providing this fuller view of his stage plays. As many dramatic literature courses only have time to examine one or two of the plays, Whyman's book is a useful resource regardless of which Chekhov play the instructor chooses to examine.

Each chapter in section 2 is organized in a similar manner. Chapter 7, titled "Modernization and Change: The Cherry Orchard," serves as a good example of Whyman's organizational style. After a brief contextual introduction, she provides a detailed plot overview of the play. This is followed by a description of how Chekhov came to write the play, as well as details about issues the author struggled with, both in writing and production—which, in turn, is then followed by Whyman's insightful discussion of four major themes in the play ("Self-determination and dependence," "Philosophizing and politics," "The future," and "Modernization and development: The breaking string and the cherry orchard"). Each of these nuanced discussions serves to illuminate the elegance and complexity of Chekhov's dramaturgy and is useful both for the production team and in the classroom.

Whyman closes most chapters with a section devoted to "Key productions" of Chekhov's work, and she limits herself almost entirely to major Russian and British productions (although she does include a discussion of the American film Vanya on 42nd...