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David Hare
It’s not often that I see a contemporary play. Actually, come to think of it, I’ve only been to one before, Tom Stoppard’s The Hard Problem, this year at the National. I’m so busy trying to catch up on some fifty years of not having gone to the theatre that there is now hardly enough time, let alone money, to pay much attention to what is new. It’s also a far more speculative venture. Yet…. it is a bridge that must be crossed.
I saw the final day of the run: three tragedies, three bullets, three corpses; countless tortured souls, vodkas, and laughs; one great day of theatre!
I’m always reading that when it comes to writing characters that have lives of their own, defy being pigeonholed or any sort of authorial agenda, and that are ultimately unfathomable, no one comes near to Shakespeare and then Chekhov. That’s reason enough to want to see and read Chekhov’s plays.
