Young Chekhov: Platonov, Ivanov, The Seagull

Anton Chekhov is one of the undisputed masters of world drama. He is usually thought to hide himself behind his characters and stories, keeping his own personality well off-stage. But when he was young he wrote three plays — Platonov, Ivanov and The Seagull — which, with their thrilling sunbursts of youthful anger and romanticism, reveal a very different playwright from the one known by his mature, more familiar work.

Young Chekhov brings these three blazing dramas together in versions by in...