Ivanov

Only a year ago, the landowner Nikolai Ivanov was full of energy and optimism, in love with his wife and working hard. Now, for no reason he can understand, Ivanov is overcome with inertia and self-disgust. His wife is dying and he feels nothing. He is drowning in debt and despair, and he does nothing. Is it him? Is it Russia? And is the possibility of happiness with the young woman who loves him just a cruel illusion? Ivanov was the 27-year-old Chekhov's shot at despatching the 'superfluous man' of Russian literature, and in surrounding him with a brilliantly drawn set of provincial types he created some of the best comedy he was ever to write.

Anton Chekhov, Russian dramatist and short-story writer, was born in 1860, the son of a grocer and the grandson of a serf. After graduating in medicine from Moscow University in 1884, he began to make his name in the theatre with the one-act comedies The Bear, The Proposal and The Wedding. His earliest full-length plays, Ivanov (1887) and The Wood Demon (1889), were not successful, and The Seagull, produced in 1896, was a failure until a triumphant revival by the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. This was followed by Uncle Vanya (1899), Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904), shortly after the production of which Chekhov died. The first English translations of his plays were performed within five years of his death.