Publisher's Synopsis
LITTLE COMEDIES, an evening of five short plays by Anton Chekhov, span the author's career; this version of ON THE HARMFULNESS OF TOBACCO was one of the last pieces he wrote. Often presented as short farces or even one-note jokes, these plays are much more. Here characters struggle, are lost, unaware, scared - and always recognizably human. And as with Chekhov's great full-length plays, the "comedy" of these "comedies" is that of being profoundly human. LITTLE COMEDIES is newly translated by Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear (the foremost translators of Russian literature into English alive today) and playwright Richard Nelson.
