SOURCE: "Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard" in Drama and Reality: The European Theatre since Ibsen, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, pp. 94-8.

In this essay, Gaskell examines Chekhov's "uniquely honest and sensitive vision of life" in The Cherry Orchard.

Chekhov finished The Cherry Orchard in October 1903 and sent it immediately to the Moscow Art Theatre. Three weeks later, writing again from Yalta, he asked Vishnevsky, one of the actors with the company, to keep him a seat for Pillars of Society: 'I want to have a look at this amazing Norwegian play and will even pay for the privilege. Ibsen is my favourite author, you know.' If this was meant seriously, which seems unlikely, one would guess that it caused some surprise. Stanislavsky records that when they were acting Hedda Gabler Chekhov told him bluntly that Ibsen was not a playwright. On another occasion, at a rehearsal of The Wild...