J.D. Salinger, speaking through the voice of Buddy Glass, hit the nail on the head when he wrote, "Have you ever seen a really beautiful production of, say, The Cherry Orchard? Don't say you have. Nobody has. You may have seen 'inspired' productions, 'competent' productions, but never anything beautiful. Never one where Chekhov's talent it matched, nuance for nuance, idiosyncrasy for idiosyncrasy, by every soul onstage." Indeed, Chekhov's oeuvre can prove maddeningly elusive for actors and directors, who have a hard time resisting the urge to overemphasize the understated. The playwright himself was often unhappy with the first productions staged by Constantin Stanislavsky's famed Moscow Art Theater; in fact, after a preliminary reading of what is arguably his most challenging play, Three Sisters, Stanislavsky remarked, "[Chekhov] thought he had written a happy comedy and all of us considered the play a tragedy." more ›