Little Comedies

LITTLE COMEDIES an evening of five short plays by Anton Chekhov span the author's career; this version of ON THE HARMFULNESS OF TOBACCO was one of the last pieces he wrote. Often presented as short farces or even one-note jokes these plays are much more. Here characters struggle are lost unaware scared — and always recognizably human. And as with Chekhov's great full-length plays the comedy of these comedies is that of being profoundly human. LITTLE COMEDIES is newly translated by Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear (the foremost translators of Russian literature into English alive today) and playwright Richard Nelson.. LITTLE COMEDIES finds the sublimity in intimacy and reminds one that the author was among many things in his too-short life a master of the short story … by turns riotously funny deeply sad and quietly contemplative. All reverberate with Chekhov's gently barbed humanism his nose for hypocrisy and hubris and his disarming deceptive simplicity that is really anything but. Chekhov had the vision to encompass an array of emotional highs and lows within just a few minutes of stage time and with LITTLE COMEDIES we experience this seesawing sensation again and again and again … Translated by Richard Nelson Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky they sparkle with colloquial wit and charm. —The Houston Chronicle