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retrophrenologist's review against another edition
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
marialianou's review against another edition
4.0
ΝΑΤΑΛΙΑ: Έπεσα πολύ χαμηλά στην ίδια μου την εκτίμηση! Μα θέλω να φανώ τίμια, όποιες κι αν είναι οι συνέπειες!
chairmanbernanke's review against another edition
3.0
A good play, interesting to see what was censored.
narflet's review against another edition
3.0
Reading a play text, especially one you've never seen acted, is never really going to work that well. But, having seen Birmingham Royal Ballet perform a one-act ballet based on this last month, I was intrigued. I thought it'd be interesting to read it so I could fully appreciate what aspects of the play had been drawn on to make the ballet. The ballet was created in 1976, with music by Chopin and choreography by Sir Frederick Ashton, and is simply divine.
The play is quite different. Where the ballet has very much chosen to focus on Natasha and Belyaev, and has a very feminine perspective to it, the play had a much more masculine feel to me as the male roles are more central to the play and were, largely, reduced for the ballet. I found the first three acts easy, but slightly tedious, to read through. However, acts four and five is where it all gets really good; I zipped through the ending and really enjoyed it.
I'm not totally sure about the translation. At times it felt quite broken, like the English wasn't quite right; an odd turn of phrase, or choice of word. I wouldn't call it bad, and I have no other translation to compare it to, I just found it a little odd at times. Like a non-native English speaker had tried to express themselves in English and not quite found the right words.
The play is quite different. Where the ballet has very much chosen to focus on Natasha and Belyaev, and has a very feminine perspective to it, the play had a much more masculine feel to me as the male roles are more central to the play and were, largely, reduced for the ballet. I found the first three acts easy, but slightly tedious, to read through. However, acts four and five is where it all gets really good; I zipped through the ending and really enjoyed it.
I'm not totally sure about the translation. At times it felt quite broken, like the English wasn't quite right; an odd turn of phrase, or choice of word. I wouldn't call it bad, and I have no other translation to compare it to, I just found it a little odd at times. Like a non-native English speaker had tried to express themselves in English and not quite found the right words.
yjpenny's review against another edition
emotional
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
plingelinn's review against another edition
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
smcleish's review against another edition
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in February 2001.
One of the most important plays of the nineteenth century, A Month in the Country is a precursor of the work of Chekhov, and brings to the theatre the psychological interests of Turgenev's novels (which also influenced the writers who followed him). Surprisingly, Turgenev had little confidence in the play, and certainly didn't expect it to be staged. He was modest about his writing in general, and meekly accepted the verdict of literary friends that he was no dramatist. It is possible to see why these critics did not respond positively to the play. It is immensely long; without cuts, a performance would last over five hours. It is not a romantic melodrama, though it has a theme, doomed love, which has melodramatic potential. (Melodramas were the staple of the nineteenth century stage.) Its author describes A Month in the Country as a "comedy", but it is an extremely puzzling generic attribution. It has political and sexual undercurrents which caused trouble with the official censor, leading to its original publication in a drastically cut version. (This translation, like all modern ones, is of the restored full text.)
The plot of A Month in the Country is pretty much a mirror image of that of Turgenev's novel First Love, in which a young man discovers that his rival for the affections of the woman he considers a goddess is his own father. Verochka is a seventeen year old orphan who lives with Natalya Petrovna, her guardian Natalya has recently appointed a new tutor for her own son, the student Belyaev, and Verochka develops a crush on him as Natalya desires to make him her lover. The mainspring of the play is Natalya's attempts to manipulate those around her to get her desires, and this includes trying to arrange a marriage between her ward and their neighbour, an unprepossessing, unromantic man in his late forties. Her machinations eventually cause the destruction of the lives around her.
Turgenev reasonably enough regarded Natalya as the central character in the play, though it is possible to produce it to make the naive Verochka almost as important. The tutor, unaware of the passions he has created, is a fairly empty part. The other men are more interesting. Islyaev, Natalya's husband, is fairly peripheral to the action; always wanting to believe the best of everyone, he sees very little of what is going on around him. The censor wanted to change his and Natalya's relationship, on the grounds that it wasn't decent to portray a woman with a living husband chasing another man. Islyaev's best friend, Rakitin, has been hopelessly in love with Natalya for years, and his unrequited passion could almost provide the basis for a play of its own. Then there is the local doctor, Schpiegelsky, who is a cynical outsider (as a man from a poor background, he is of the wrong class to be fully accepted). His is perhaps the most forward looking role in the play, the observer of the follies of mankind having become quite a staple character in modern literature.
The length of the play gives Turgenev the space to develop the characters in an almost novelistic manner, and this is how he initially regarded it, as something he wrote to be read rather than performed. It does, in fact, work well on the stage, with judicious cutting; far more so than many plays not intended for performance.
One of the most important plays of the nineteenth century, A Month in the Country is a precursor of the work of Chekhov, and brings to the theatre the psychological interests of Turgenev's novels (which also influenced the writers who followed him). Surprisingly, Turgenev had little confidence in the play, and certainly didn't expect it to be staged. He was modest about his writing in general, and meekly accepted the verdict of literary friends that he was no dramatist. It is possible to see why these critics did not respond positively to the play. It is immensely long; without cuts, a performance would last over five hours. It is not a romantic melodrama, though it has a theme, doomed love, which has melodramatic potential. (Melodramas were the staple of the nineteenth century stage.) Its author describes A Month in the Country as a "comedy", but it is an extremely puzzling generic attribution. It has political and sexual undercurrents which caused trouble with the official censor, leading to its original publication in a drastically cut version. (This translation, like all modern ones, is of the restored full text.)
The plot of A Month in the Country is pretty much a mirror image of that of Turgenev's novel First Love, in which a young man discovers that his rival for the affections of the woman he considers a goddess is his own father. Verochka is a seventeen year old orphan who lives with Natalya Petrovna, her guardian Natalya has recently appointed a new tutor for her own son, the student Belyaev, and Verochka develops a crush on him as Natalya desires to make him her lover. The mainspring of the play is Natalya's attempts to manipulate those around her to get her desires, and this includes trying to arrange a marriage between her ward and their neighbour, an unprepossessing, unromantic man in his late forties. Her machinations eventually cause the destruction of the lives around her.
Turgenev reasonably enough regarded Natalya as the central character in the play, though it is possible to produce it to make the naive Verochka almost as important. The tutor, unaware of the passions he has created, is a fairly empty part. The other men are more interesting. Islyaev, Natalya's husband, is fairly peripheral to the action; always wanting to believe the best of everyone, he sees very little of what is going on around him. The censor wanted to change his and Natalya's relationship, on the grounds that it wasn't decent to portray a woman with a living husband chasing another man. Islyaev's best friend, Rakitin, has been hopelessly in love with Natalya for years, and his unrequited passion could almost provide the basis for a play of its own. Then there is the local doctor, Schpiegelsky, who is a cynical outsider (as a man from a poor background, he is of the wrong class to be fully accepted). His is perhaps the most forward looking role in the play, the observer of the follies of mankind having become quite a staple character in modern literature.
The length of the play gives Turgenev the space to develop the characters in an almost novelistic manner, and this is how he initially regarded it, as something he wrote to be read rather than performed. It does, in fact, work well on the stage, with judicious cutting; far more so than many plays not intended for performance.
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