ABSTRACT
Doubtless the plays of Chekhov are and always will be caviare to the general - at least outside of Russia, where, besides, the metaphor does not hold. No one who goes to the theater with fixed ideas as to the sort of entertainment appropriate to the place can be anything but bewildered by them, and no one thus out of tune with their author can possibly catch their exquisitely tenuous aroma. Yet even in New York Chekhov has a real though limited public. ‘The Cherry Orchard’ and the ‘Three Sisters’ have been given recently with success by Miss Le Gallienne, and now a cooperative company under the direction of that admirable actor Leo Bulgakov is performing ‘The Seagull’ delightfully at the Comedy Theatre. Here once more Chekhov casts his all but indescribable spell - a spell which claims us so gently that anyone can resist it but which rewards those who willingly submit themselves with an experience as preciously fragile as any which the theater has to offer.
