Wild Honey - (Modern Plays) 2nd Edition by Anton Chekhov (Paperback)

About the Book

Michael Frayn's comedy of errors, drawn from Chekhov's untitled and posthumously discovered early play, is a tale of nineteenth-century Russian life replete with classic misunderstandings, irrepressible desires and nostalgia for a vanishing world.

Book Synopsis

Oh, Misha, it's terrible to be an educated woman. An educated woman with nothing to do. What am I here for? Why am I alive? They should make me a professor somewhere, or a director of something ... If I were a diplomat I'd turn the whole world upside down ... An educated woman ... And nothing to do.

Village schoolmaster Mikhail Vasilyevich has it all: wit, intelligence, a comfortable and respectable life in provincial Russia, and the attentions of four beautiful women - one of whom is his devoted wife... As summer arrives and the seasonal festivities commence, the rapidly intensifying heat makes everyone giddy with sunlight, vodka - and passion.

Michael Frayn's comedy of errors, drawn from Chekhov's untitled and posthumously discovered early play, is a tale of nineteenth-century Russian life replete with classic misunderstandings, irrepressible desires and nostalgia for a vanishing world.

Wild Honey received its premiere in the National Theatre's Lyttelton space, London, on 19 July 1984. This edition was published for the revival at the Hampstead Theatre in December 2016.

Review Quotes

"The triumph of Frayn's translation/adaptation is to have taken all the bones of this immature work and moulded it to offer us a tantalising glimpse of the genius to come" - Lyn Gardner, City Limits

"A brilliant piece of theatre bearing the stigmata of genius" - Michael Billington, Guardian

"A tight, moving and funny new play in four beautifully organised acts that casts equal credit on Chekhov and his adaptor" - Michael Coveney, Financial Times

"Michael Frayn has added a laughing lyricism that brings the elusive comedy of Chekhov into an English idiom" - Ned Chaillet, Wall Street Journal

"One of the most enjoyable plays in London, and Frayn is a hero" - Clive Barnes, New York Post

"Sparkling and highly performable ... The effect is of an old clock completely taken apart and given a new movement. It is still Chekhov, but it is also Frayn" - Michael Ratcliffe, Observer

About the Author

Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and read Russian, French and Moral Sciences (Philosophy) at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He began his career as a journalist on the Manchester Guardian and the Observer. His award-winning plays include Alphabetical Order, Make and Break and Noises Off, all of which received Best Comedy of the Year awards, while Benefactors was named Best Play of the Year. Two of his more recent plays, Copenhagen and Democracy, also won numerous awards (including, for Copenhagen, the Tony in New York and the Prix Molière in Paris). In 2006 Donkeys' Years was revived in the West End thirty years after its premiere and was followed in 2007 by The Crimson Hotel, at the Donmar, and by Afterlife, at the National Theatre, in 2008. His most recent plays include Frayn has translated Chekhov's last four plays, dramatised a selection of his one-act plays and short stories under the title The Sneeze, and adapted his first, untitled play, as Wild Honey. Frayn's novels include Towards the End of the Morning (in the USA, Against Entropy), The Trick of It, A Landing on the Sun, Headlong and Spies. His most recent books were a work of philosophy, The Human Touch, and Stage Directions, a collection of his writing on the theatre.