Pocket Guide to Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg

The essential, concise and readable guide to the plays of Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg.

Are you looking for an overview of the major work of these three leading playwrights?
Are you going to see a play by Ibsen, Chekhov or Strindberg and want a run-down of the storyline?
Do you want to know why these three are considered major writers?

A Pocket Guide to Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg gives you all this and more:

An introduction to each playwright
Historical and theatrical context to their plays
A synopsis for and analysis of each of the major plays
Details of productions around the world
A chronology of plays during the period

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) and August Strindberg (1848-1912) are acknowledged masters of their craft. This handy reference book aims to tell you why they should be considered as such, as well as giving you a snapshot view of the plays and a considered view of the writers.

Faber's 'Pocket Guide' series includes: A Pocket Guide to Shakespeare's Plays, A Pocket Guide to the 20th Century Theatre, A Pocket Guide to Opera and A Pocket Guide to Alan Ayckbourn's Plays.

Recently a triumphant King Lear in New York, Michael Pennington has been a leading actor for fifty years. For the RSC, of which he is an Honorary Associate Artist, and for the English Shakespeare Company, which he co-founded, he has played Hamlet, Timon of Athens, Berowne, Edgar, Mercutio, Angelo, Richard II, Coriolanus, Macbeth, Henry V, Leontes and Jack Cade. He directed Twelfth Night in the UK, Tokyo and Chicago and The Hamlet Project for the National Theatre Bucharest. In 2004 he gave the British Academy Shakespeare Lecture, the first practitioner to do so since 1925. He has also played leading roles in Chekhov, Ibsen, de Filippo, Euripides, Molière, Congreve, Osborne, Pinter, Harwood, O'Casey, Tolstoy, Wilde, Dostoyevsky, Stoppard, Bulgakov, Shaf-fer, Granville-Barker, Brenton, Orton, Hecht and Mac Arthur, Mamet, Strindberg and many others. He played Oedipus on BBC TV, Jude the Obscure on radio and Michael Foot in The Iron Lady. He has written User's Guides to Hamlet, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night's Dream; The Pocket Guide to Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg (Faber, with Stephen Unwin); Sweet William: Twenty Thousand Hours with Shakespeare; and Are You There, Crocodile?: Inventing Anton Chekhov. He continues to tour his solo shows on Shakespeare and Chekhov throughout the world. Stephen Unwin is Artistic Director of the Rose Theatre in Kingston. He founded English Touring Theatre in 1993, where his Shakespeare productions include A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Macbeth, As You Like It, Henry IV, Parts One and Two, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet. He is the winner of the 2003 Sam Wanamaker Shakespeare Globe Award. He directed Kenneth McLeish's translations of A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler and The Master Builder. He has directed more than fifty theatre and opera productions for the Royal National Theatre, English National Opera, the Royal Opera House, the Royal Court Theatre and many others. His work has been seen at the Donmar Warehouse, the Almeida Theatre and the Old Vic. He has co-written A Pocket Guide to Twentieth Century Drama and A Pocket Guide to Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg (Faber & Faber), So You Want to be a Theatre Director? (Nick Hern Books) and A Guide to the Plays of Bertolt Brecht (Methuen).