In her illuminating programme note accompanying the recent production of Summerfolk at the National Theatre, the cultural historian, Rosamund Bartlett, describes Maxim Gorky’s third play as a ‘grotesque next chapter’ to Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (2003). Summerfolk was first staged in Moscow in November 1904, some four months after Chekhov’s death. Chekhov had been corresponding […]