Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"Aging actress Irina visits the country estate where her brother Sorin and her son Konstantin reside. She brings her lover Boris, a successful novelist. The estate teems with desire, jealousy and angst. The estate manager's daughter Masha is in love with Konstantin, who is in love with the sweet neighbor Nina, who is in love with Boris. Boris casually uses and discards Nina while Irina continuously treats Konstantin with similar disdain. Emotions...

A revival of Anton Chekhov's masterpiece of imprisonment in wealth and regret.

Russia at the turn of the century provides the setting for comedy sketches about life's minor tragedies.

On his Uncle Sorin's lakeside estate, Constantine's new play premieres to disdainful reactions from the family and friends who have gathered: Masha; her future husband Medvedenko; Dorn, a lecherous doctor; Shamrayev, manager of the estate; and his wife Polina. Constantine's mother, the famous actress Madame Arkadina (and prima donna), is not one to suppress her true feelings on her son's contribution to the theatre: She abhors it. Humiliated, Constantine...

Mamet discusses the real theme of Chekhov's play and presents his own version of the story in which a Russian aristocratic family is forced to sell its estate to the son of a peasant.

"The dog Kashtanka belongs to a drunken carpenter who takes her out one day, but on the way home loses her in the confusion of a military parade. The story is told by an omniscient narrator who privileges Kashtanka's point of view, so we follow the dog's subsequent adventures largely from her eyes." --