ANNA ANDREEVNA. 'But where are they, where are they? Ah! Lord!... (Opening the door.) My husband! Antosha! Anthony! (She speaks very quickly, addressing her daughter.) And it's always you... always after you... What a bugger!... And the pin here and the braid there. (Running to the window.) Antone, where are you going, where are you going? What ? Has the revizor arrived? He has mustaches! What whiskers? [1]
The first part of the 19th century witnessed the liberation of Russian theater from foreign cultures as well as from classical codes (five-act plays, propriety, etc.) Alexander Pushkin, for example, broke with the rule of the Three Units (time, place, action) in the tragedy Boris Godunov (1831). Moreover, when Nicolas Gogol plays Le Révizor , a piece based on a huge misunderstanding, the last scene is completely silent.
The authors use the power of the theater to denounce the pretense that reigns in Russia. Indeed, the masks worn by the actors are the same as in the Russian nobility.
MARGARITOV:Goodbye, my soul. (He hands his keys to Ludmilla.) Here are the keys. If you go out, take them with you, don't leave them here. There are effects in my drawer, and I don't trust anyone. We are in a country of starvation, people live from day to day on the scrap of bread they have been able to tear off. [2]
The Russian theater of the second half of the 19th century is mainly represented by Alexandre Ostrovski, a playwright imbued with a form of realism whose first plays were nevertheless banned. For the first time, Russian merchants are represented on stage, and the transcription of their language is faithful.
The essential Chekhov remains the most famous Russian playwright of world dimensions. A playwright at the dawn of the 20th century, Chekhov is close to the committed author who recounts, pained, the misfortune of people and in particular that of women.
We remember his one-act plays, like The Bear (1888) or A marriage proposal (1890), as well as those with characters philosophizing on past life, on the passage of time and the state of helplessness of human beings in the face of yesterday. His play The Three Sisters (1901) expresses the evolution of men and women in destinies that separate, then reunite without knowing when, or if they will really meet again.
But the most confusing thing about Chekhov's plays is that they never have a concrete end, and thus leave spectators perplexed by an unfinished performance. Thus began the theater at the dawn of the 20th century.
ANDRÉ:Where is my past, where has it disappeared? I was young, cheerful, intelligent, I had beautiful dreams and beautiful thoughts, my present and my future illuminated with hope... Why, as soon as we begin to live, do we become boring, dull, insignificant , lazy, indifferent, useless, unhappy?... [3]