SOURCE: Brown, John Russell. “Chekhov on the British Stage: Differences.” In Chekhov on the British Stage, edited and translated by Patrick Miles, pp. 6-19. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

In the following essay, Brown examines how The Seagull and Chekhov's other plays have been interpreted on the British stage.

Productions of Chekhov's plays in Britain provide yearly proof of this dramatist's wide and lasting influence. But a look behind the playbills will reveal more—that these plays have affected the British sense of what theatre can be. In performance they reinforce a persistent belief that the stage can hold a mirror up to life, and clarify the very forms and pressures of present-day existence.

During the last 350 years, no other dramatist writing in a language that is not English has seemed to speak in Britain with such assurance, or to use means that are so readily understood. Chekhov...