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Anton Chekhov: Three Vaudevilles Program [1991], University Of Southern Maine Department Of Theatre

Programs 1990-1991 Season

By Anton Chekhov

Directed by Yvonne Shaffer

These short early comedies, (Chekhov himself described them as "vaudevilles"), though light-hearted and indeed often farcical, nevertheless give evidence of Anton Chekhov's perception of our precarious grip on our destinies, a perception which led him to explore the troubled, darkly comic world of his mature work. Adapted here by Yvonne Shafer, they reveal a quizzically amused sympathy for the life of the Russian moujik and the petit bourgeois, expressed in deft] y controlled episodes that range in mood from the melancholy to the wildly funny. They afford a valuable and rare opportunity to …