Chekhov in Ireland

This will be our first visit to the Republic of Ireland with a theatre production and we are naturally very excited. 'Chekhov's Shorts' has previously toured to over 100 venues in England, Wales, Scotland and even Greece!  It’s been called ‘the perfect introduction to the wonderful world of Chekhov’ and delighted audiences everywhere.  Why spend an evening going to see one great play when you can see 5 in under 2 hours for the price of one?! 

You might ask what relevance five 19th century short plays by a Russian Doctor have for Irish audiences today.  Well, more than you might think - just have a listen to these descriptions of each play and see if they don’t sound a little, well, like Irish plays:

A young farmer comes to propose to his neighbour’s daughter. In the middle of his proposal they start to argue about the ownership of some land… 

A beautiful young matchmaker tries to find a wife for a retired officer who wants to meet ‘a dimwit’.

A henpecked husband has been asked to give a lecture on some popular subject for charity.  He chooses to talk about ‘The Evils of Tobacco’ but spends the whole time instead telling the audience how his wife and 5 daughters bully him, don’t give him any dinner, steal his money and how he secretly wants to run away …

A young widow is mourning the 7 month anniversary of the death of her husband.  She has vowed to shun the society of men and enter a convent. A handsome (but monumentally hungover) landowner calls to say that her late husband owed him money and that he will not leave until it is paid. They begin to argue...

A drunk elderly actor falls asleep in his dressing room and gets locked in the theatre for the night with only a pathetic prompter for company…

They would not seem out of place in the Donegal of Friel, the Mayo of Synge or the Dublin of O'Casey. In fact, Brian Friel has adapted and translated Chekhov and some critics have hailed him as ‘the Irish Chekhov’.  WB Yeats also described the short story writer Frank O’Connor as ‘Ireland’s Chekhov’.  Chekhov’s work has influenced other Irish writers such as George Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, Samuel Beckett and William Trevor.  Thomas Kilroy’s 1981 adaptation of The Seagull moved the action from Russia to the West of Ireland and he describes here the attraction of Chekhov to Irish audiences:

‘There are the ingredients of the plays themselves which Irish audiences can respond to with recognition. A provincial culture rooted in land ownership. A familial structure that is so elastic that it can hold all sorts of strays and visitors and drop-ins in painful intimacy.  All that talkativeness, tea-drinking and dreaming, above all that dreaming.  Chekhov's dreamers are immediately accessible to Irish audiences in all their illusions.  Comedy that is brushed by darkness is part of our tradition.’