The Seagull [Paperback]

Tom Stoppard's singular adaptation of Anton Chekhov's famous play, a bittersweet tragedy of lives and love gone wrongPraise for Tom Stoppard andThe Seagull:

Remains utterly faithful to the original while giving it the lightest dusting of [Stoppard's] own brisk wit . . . A play that might have been written a hundred days instead of a hundred years ago. ???New York Times

Stoppard . . . remains faithful to the humor that Chekhov intended to convey amid all the pathos. ???Chicago Tribune

The determined folks camping out every night to land tickets [toThe Seagull] are not likely to go home disgruntled after an audience with this famously feathered creature . . . Robustly funny and pleasingly fluid. ???Charles Isherwood,Variety

[Stoppard is] one of the greatest living dramatic playwrights in the Western world. ???San Francisco Chronicle

The English-speaking world's brainiest playwright. ???Wall Street Journal

Stoppard's recent translation ofThe Seagullhas given us the achingly sad and escapably tragic world that the great Russian playwright envisioned. The work overtakes us . . . Emotions flow like tears. ???New York Daily News

Consistently funny, a sharply observed human comedy of crisscrossing desires, out of which tragedy emerges as an accidental surprise. The translation by Tom Stoppard . . . never sacrifices pungent immediacy to the fetish of literal accuracy . . . Done well, Chekhov never tires. ???Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Anyone blanching at the thought of ingenious Stoppardian word games in Chekhov's bucolic setting . . . may be surprised . . . A fine, faithful translation . . . Stripped to its bare essentials,The Seagull. . . is a remarkably modern play that treads in uncharted psychological minefields . . . An enormous amount to chew on. It's a brilliant portralÓ+