Title: Five Plays
Author: Anton Chekhov
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 304
Rating: 4/5
Okay, so as there are five individual plays here, I reviewed each of them individually and will be posting that as well as this, which is my overarching review of the book as a whole. Here’s what I thought:
Ivanov: Considering the title of this is just a name, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. It turned out to be a remarkably moving play that does what Shakespeare was known for, spanning the range of human emotions. Colour me highly impressed.
The Seagull: This was my second Chekhov play, and while I didn’t like it as much as the first, I did think it had some interesting stuff to say on writing and being a writer. Cool!
Uncle Vanya: A delightfully bleak play from a writer who manages to combine bleakness and humour in the same scene. I was somehow expecting some more from it, though, probably because it’s so famous.
Three Sisters: This was one of the more minor plays from the collection that I read, at least to me. It just didn’t seem as though there was that much happening, although I’ll admit that there was some cracking dialogue and some reasonably good characterisation. It was up against some stiff competition.
The Cherry Orchard: This was a short and sweet little play with all of the hallmarks of a typical Chekhov play, including both the levity and the gloom. Some of his others were better, but still good!
Overall, they were pretty good and Chekhov is a fantastic playwright, but there are also enough recurring themes and similarities that each play started to blur into each other. I liked Ivanov the most, but I read it first.