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The Wood Demon (play)

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Written by
  
Anton Chekhov

First performance
  
27 December 1889

Original language
  
Russian Language

3.3/5
Goodreads

Date premiered
  
1889

Playwright
  
Anton Chekhov

The Wood Demon (play) t1gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcQSUGtxtkqIobn6

Similar
  
Anton Chekhov plays, Comedy plays, Other plays

Bbc play of the month chekhov s the wood demon 1974 francesca annis ian holm


The Wood Demon (Russian: Леший, Goblin, 1889) is a comedic play in four acts written by Russian author Anton Chekhov. The play was written in 1888 and debuted in December 27, 1889 at the Abramov Theater.

Contents

The play was first refused by the Alexandrinsky Theatre of Saint Petersburg and the Maly Theatre of Moscow.

Eight years after this play failed, Chekhov returned to the work. He reduced the cast list by half, changed the climatic suicide into an anti-climax of a failed homicide, and published the reworked play, much more successfully, under the title Uncle Vanya.

the wood demon by chekhov


Characters

  • Alexander Serebryakov, a retired professor
  • Helena, his wife of 27 years old
  • Sofia Alexandrovna (Sonya), his daughter from his first marriage, 20 years old
  • Mary V. Wynn, widow of a privy councilor, the mother of the first wife of professor
  • Egor P. Wynn, her son
  • Leonid S. Zheltukhin, not after taking a technologist, a very rich man
  • Julia Stepanovna, his sister, 18 years old
  • Ivan Orlov, a landowner
  • Fedor, his son
  • Michael L. Khrushchev, a landowner, he graduated at the Faculty of Medicine
  • Ilya Ilyich Dyadin
  • Basil servant Zheltukhina
  • Simon, an employee at the mill
  • Themes

    A dominant theme in The Wood Demon is that destruction of the environment and of people's lives are closely linked together.

    History

    The play was initially a collaboration between Chekhov and Alexey Suvorin. As such, it is full of biographical material collected during their time spent together in the summer of 1888. The play is linked with stories already written or in the process of being written, that stemmed from Chekhov's journey in 1887 to Kharkov and Taganrog.

    Reception

    The failure of The Wood Demon was one of the motivations for Chekhov's journey through Siberia and why he abstained from writing a play for the next seven years.

    References

    The Wood Demon (play) Wikipedia