Applause Books, NYC, 1995. Jean-Claude van Itallie’s much acclaimed English versions of Anton Chekhov’s The Sea Gull, The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya.

"...The advantage of using major playwrights to Anglicize foreign classics are obvious. Occasionally they may slip into the pit of primal creativity, but for most of the time, indeed for virtually all of the time they are renewing language rather than translating it. … Mr. van Itallie’s Sea Gull is idiomatic, but it has the overtones of now and then. It is a real past – translation does have its advantages when the right person is translating the right playwright. There is here the soft trampoline of a subtext that original language productions can never aspire to without the risk of desecration of a national monument." Clive Barnes, New York Times.

For excerpts and more reviews, please go to Sea Gull, Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya under "plays" on this web site.