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'Ivanov,' Shakily Straddling Centuries; Studio Christens Its New House With a Chilly Chekhov

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From: The Washington Post
Date: 20041109
Author:Peter Marks

As a young man, Anton Chekhov was aching to reform a Russian theater he found hidebound and histrionic. His goal, he wrote at the time, was to "show life and men as they are, and not as they would look if you put them on stilts." The first of his major efforts to distill something like cold truth was the 1887 "Ivanov," the tragicomic story of a forward-thinking landowner who lapses into emotional rigor mortis after the joys and pressures of material existence lose their meaning for him.

"Ivanov" is the least performed of Chekhov's prominent works, and judging from the opaque revival by ...

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