Annie Baker revitalizes Chekhov's masterpiece

First staged off-Broadway in 2012 at Soho Rep, Pulitzer-winning playwright Annie Baker brings her critically acclaimed production of the Chekhov classic to the Goodman Theatre in early 2017. Using modern language without Americanizing the original translation completely, Baker's fresh new take on the work won huge accolades upon its premiere. We follow the fortunes of a once feted professor whose career and health are in decline as he embarks on early retirement to the estate of his late first wife.

The arrival of the academic and his sultry younger wife at a country estate soon causes massive upheaval for everybody in attendance, winding up with a convoluted love triangle between two other men and even a woman, whilst the Professor remains completely unaware. An examination into the tense contrast between privileged indolence and hard graft, the foibles of human behavior is revealed in all its messy, heart-tugging and often hilarious tragedy.