The Stage

Chekhov’s life dramatised in Radio 4 series

Published Tuesday 14 October 2008 at 14:50 by Matthew Hemley

BBC Radio 4 is to dramatise Irene Nemirovsky’s biography of playwright Anton Chekhov in a production serialised over a week in November.

The five-part drama will be broadcast in Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour slot, beginning on Monday November 3, and is being directed by Lucy Bailey, who was most recently at the helm of Timon of Athens at The Globe and who is lined up to direct Julius Caesar for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2009.

Nemirovsky’s biography, called A Life of Chekhov, has been adapted by Michael Hastings, who wrote the play Calico, performed in the West End in 2004.

His adaptation of Nemirovsky’s book will star Niamh Cusack as Chekhov’s mother Yevgenia and Dave Hill as his father, Paul.

Chekhov, whose work Ivanov is currently playing in the West End, will be portrayed by Andrew Scott, who was awarded an Olivier Award in 2005 for his performance in A Girl in a Car with a Man at the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs.

Meanwhile, Romola Garai, who recently played Nina in the RSC production of The Seagull, will play the playwright’s sister Masha.

The production, which takes its title from the book, is being made by independent company Promenade, set up by director Bill Bryden and Nicholas Newton in 1994.

Newton, who also co-founded the Bush Theatre in London, said Nemirovsky’s biography worked as a drama because she “puts aside the conventional biographer’s position” to write the story as “if she was in the presence of the Chekhov family”.

He said each part of the serial portrayed a scene from Chekhov’s life which could be listened to as a self-contained story.