This is one of Russian classics. All stories by Anton P. Checkov would touch your soul but this is one of the best of them, picturing young lady struggling with prejudices of the society. I love his stories for being the mirror of Russian life of the dawn of XX century.

can anyone help me locate the web site for Matt Talbot???? Thanks Shamrok47@aol.com

Okay. I am slightly biased in my review of this book, for reasons which will become clear later on. First off, it should be said that it looks great; glossy and well-manufactured, on acid-free paper, it will last a good long while (though don't put it in your windowsill - I put my copy of the first volume there and it's paled noticeably.)

Judy Friel's short essay on Patrick Mason's tenure as artistic director of Ireland's national theatre is very good about Mason's sense of historical mission. He opened the theatre up to younger writers and actors, giving lucrative and welcome jobs to the many talented people that had arisen from the fringe theatre scene that exploded in Dublin in the early 90s. He also brought plays such as "Angels in America" to an audience that might never otherwise have seen them. (Not many saw "Angels" - scared off by the rumour of Gay People On Stage, they stayed away in droves and it bombed, which was a shame as it was a fine production, albeit only of Part 1.)

Michael Harding is an Abbey regular and "Sour Grapes" is his jaundiced look at the modern priesthood. Not entirely unexpectedly, he finds it riddled with cynicism, abuse of power and faithlessness. The play was intensely topical, because at the time it went on, the country was swamped with revelations (sic) about sexual abuse in the clergy. I find Harding's tone a bit dour and depressed, but there's no doubting the power of the piece, and it certainly reflects a changing attitude in Ireland towards the Catholic church.

Thomas Kilroy's "The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde" is an elegant meditation on the marriage of Oscar and Constance. It's a bit of a shadowplay, highly stylised, with masked puppetteers manipulating all the bit parts - the only speaking characters are Ozzie, his lady wife and his nemesis Lord Alfred Douglas, a handsome devil but by all accounts a truly appalling human being. (A recent biographer thought differently, but then said biographer was only 21 when the biography in question was published, so me may forgive him his youthful...well, ignorance.) Kilroy's conclusion is that Constance was a woman well and truly wronged, and it's hard to argue with that, although I don't know if this piece has the richness and conviction of some of his earlier work.

Alex Johnston's "Melonfarmer" is a sprawling monster of a piece that goes on much too long, but then it's a first play. (That's no excuse, mind.) I think the author spends a little too much time showing off his neat ear for the evasions and ellipses of youthful speech patterns, but there's a basic emotional honesty and a certain beady-eyed unsentimentality that readers may find refreshing. It has some moments of completely bizarre humour and an extremely nasty scene involving a bullet in the foot, both of which were thoroughly up my artistic street. If this writer worked a bit more on his stagecraft, he could get somewhere. I liked it a lot, but then, like I said at the top, I'm biased, cause - I wrote it.

Lastly, Marina Carr's "By the Bog of Cats" is a truly weird, slightly kitschy attempt to rewrite the Medea story as a domestic tragedy set in the Irish Midlands. This would be a great idea, except that Carr goes on to mess it up with a lot of musty sub-Yeatsian symbolism (black swans, ghosts, bogs) and a plot that is so plotted that you only really need to see the first scene to guess how it's all going to work out. But then, this kind of thing is just not for me. Carr is one of Ireland's leading playwrights, but the ends to which she uses her great gifts are getting increasingly obscure to me.

Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to have one of the writers review the book. All of these plays are eminently stageable, but I'll bet there's not a theatre out there that would want to do every one of them - except the Abbey, bless it.

NEW PLAYS FROM THE ABBEY THEATRE, Vol. 2, 1996-1998 is a welcome offering from editors Judy Friel and Sanford Sternlicht and from Syracuse University Press. Ms. Friel is a native of Derry, an alumnus of Trinity College, Dublin, and currently the literary manager of Ireland's National Theatre. Mr. Sternlicht is a professor of English at Syracuse University who also teaches Modern Irish Drama each summer at Trinity College. He has written extensively about English and Irish writers, and has many works in print, including A READER'S GUIDE TO MODERN IRISH DRAMA.

In NEW PLAYS... Vol. 2, the editors have provided a brief but informative introduction to modern Irish theatre. Ms. Friel gives an account of the revitalization of the National Theatre of Ireland in the 1990's by its artistic director, Patrick Mason, who examined the direction of the institution and returned it to its roots (those established by earlier Irish writers such as Yeats, J.M. Synge, and Lady Gregory), focusing on the responsibility of the Abbey Theatre to its Irish playwrights, who(to quote Yeats),
"bring to the stage the deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland."

The book contains complete plays by four of Ireland's greatest modern playwrights - in this volume they are Michael Harding (SOUR GRAPES),Thomas Kilroy (THE SECRET FALL OF CONSTANCE WILDE), Alex Johnston (MELONFARMERS), and Marina Carr (BY THE BOG OF CATS). Mr. Sternlicht provides concise biographical information on each playwright as well as a brief overview of each of their plays. The copyright and contact information for performance rights is listed on the last page.

SOUR GRAPES (Harding) is a fascinating but very sad play about pedophilia, homosexuality and the abuse of power in a Roman Catholic seminary setting, and how it drives a young seminarian to suicide. The young man's case is defended by a sympathetic priest, but the priest, not adept at investigation on a good day, is thwarted by all the other priests in the play including the Bishop and the Canon. The reader is forced to think about the effects of enforced celibacy, and the unholy attitudes/actions of most of the clergy are upsetting. The play jumps around a good deal in a sort of Joycean style. Its realism is jarring(but not surprising, as Harding is a former Catholic preist). The plays powerful statements leaves this reader feeling rather beaten down and exhausted. It certainly speaks to modern issues.

THE SECRET FALL OF CONSTANCE WILDE (Kilroy), written by one of Ireland's most distinguished writers is a sensitive historical accounting of the tragic downfall of Oscar Wilde and his wife, Constance. She is brought out from beneath the shadow of her famous and brilliant husband, and the play clearly elucidates her grief -- over her own past (suggestions of abuse at the hands of her father); over her loss of Oscar to his lover, the cruel and unstable Lord Alfred Douglas; over Oscar's very public prison sentence and her own fall in society's eyes; over her own torment at keeping their own two children away from Oscar, who desperately wants contact with them. She died at age 40, a broken shell, and Oscar followed her in death two years after. The play is presented with a chorus of attendants, Greek-style, and with some scenes including puppetry and some Kabuki effects, as in Noh theatre. It is relentlessly honest in its portrayal of the love triangle, the ambiguities of sexual identity, and the pain caused when families are broken. It is a sad but very moving work.

MELONFARMER (Johnston) is not at all about melon farmers. It is a cinema-verite look at 1990's life in urban Ireland for eight young adults, all trying to find their way in our faster-than-light, information-drenched world. They are negotiating as best they can the new sexuality, the loosening hold of the Church and the old traditional values .. and getting by in life as best they can, which sometimes means just getting by. Sean Spencer, the central character, a would-be comedian, gradually descends into drink and depression. The play is fast-paced, and has moments of hilarity. The opening had me laughing out loud. The play is tragicomic, like life. Playwright Alex Johnston is the grandson of the O'Casey-era Denis Johnston,
and his talent shines through every scene. As in the other plays presented in this book, the realism is gritty and in-your-face.
It stays with you. As Sternlicht states, it's a revelation to a middle-class, middle aged reader such as myself. [Note: the script presented is the 1997 original version for the Peacock Theatre. It has since been revised for a 2000 production, and the latter is the definitive version, per the playwright.]

Last, but not least at all, is BY THE BOG OF CATS (Carr). Ms. Carr is Ireland's leading woman playwright, and a most successful one. After reading her play, I am not surprised. Its power was so strong as to be assaulting. I was horrified by the plot and the bloodiness, but mesmerized despite myself, and I quite literally could not put it down without finishing it.
I can only imagine how powerful this would be on stage, after having it jump off the page at me from a book! It gives you chills. I don't want to give the story away. I will say that it is as strong as a Greek tragedy, and is written that way. But the characters are so real!

This is a most welcome addition to the study of Irish theatre.