Chekhov On The Air -- Russian Master's Work Done For Radio

When he died of tuberculosis in 1904, at age 42, the Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov left behind just half a dozen plays.

The finest of these bittersweet human comedies - "The Sea Gull," "The Cherry Orchard," and "The Three Sisters" - helped change forever the mood and shape of world drama.

But Chekhov left another invaluable legacy, too. From his days as a medical student right up to the year he died, the indefatigable writer-doctor also penned more than 400 short stories, many of them dazzling miniatures of perceptiveness and compassion.

Now there is an ear-pleasing way to get acquainted with Chekhov the prose artist. Sixteen stories from his canon have been committed to digital tape, in splendid radio dramatizations produced by Seattle's Globe Radio Repertory and radio station KUOW-FM.

The series airs weeknights at 10:30 p.m. on KUOW (94.9 on the dial), from Nov. 11 through Nov. 27.

Thirty-three actors lend their voices to the project, including such well-known Seattle performers as John Aylward, Laurence Ballard, Elizabeth Huddle and Frank Corrado. Members of the Seattle Symphony perform the music for the series, overseen by composer Ken Benshoof.

Sponsored by a $100,000 grant from Boeing, with another $10,000 in support from Microsoft, "Anton Chekhov: Sixteen Stories" also will get a national hearing. As part of the "NPR Playhouse" on National Public Radio, more than 100 public radio stations around the country can choose to broadcast it over the next two years.

This isn't the first series the Globe Radio Rep has produced for NPR. Previous multi-part dramatizations include the Gustave Flaubert masterwork "Madame Bovary" and Cervantes' "Don Quixote."

But the Chekhov project gave Globe artistic director Jean Sherrard and literary director John Siscoe the unique chance to assemble a retrospective of a prolific writer's oeuvre. To do so, they crafted scripts from five different English translations of Chekhov.

"We chose stories from Chekhov's entire career and are presenting them chronologically," says Sherrard. "Each episode is introduced with information about his life written for us by Simon Karlinsky, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, who is a leading Chekhov scholar."

The series opens with a program of three early stories, written by Chekhov in his early 20s.

They are each just a few pages long ("Brevity," Chekhov once said, "is the sister of talent"), and the work of a novice. Yet the irony, empathy and astute sense of observation that would become the author's stock in trade are already much in evidence.

"The Chameleon" concerns a two-faced police officer. In "The Culprit," a magistrate and peasant suffer a communication breakdown. And "Oysters" depicts father-and-son beggars who receive a surprise culinary gift.

Fittingly, the series ends with "The Betrothed," Chekhov's last story. It reveals a writer in the full bloom of his powers, and portrays a woman who defies convention by rejecting a wealthy suitor to attend college.

Little action occurs in these vignettes of Russian life. Yet they are rife with dramatic moments nonetheless. As Sherrard points out, Chekhov's genius lay in his scrupulous understanding of behavior, not in a flair for flashy plotting.

"He wrote from a position of both ambiguity and compassion," Sherrard says. "As you read him, you begin to understand how this man could have been not only a great writer, but also a doctor to the poor.

"He tells extraordinary, passionate stories, but without passing judgment on his characters. He finds these intensely painful and joyous moments in people's lives, and illuminates them."

"Chekhov: Sixteen Stories" marks the first time Boeing's advertising and promotion wing has funded a radio drama series. Fred Kelly, the corporate manager in charge of the grant, says the project is "the kind of thing that we think will help promote our good name and image."

He added that it also "fell in line" with a current Boeing-sponsored ad program, which stresses the value of literacy and reading.

The Boeing grant meant Sherrard could procure state-of-the-art recording for the series, and he is justifiably proud of the results.

"It's all taped in 24-track digital stereo at Lawson Productions here in Seattle," he points out. "The result is pristine, and you can hear every word and nuance of Chekhov perfectly."