The history of his own plays forms the first part of the book — both of their writing and their production. Here one can also discover the relationship between the documentary record on which plays such as Copenhagen, Democracy and Afterlife were based and the dramatist’s constraints and aspirations. The latter part concerns Frayn’s translations and adaptations of plays by Chekhov, Tolstoy and Trifonon and Offenbach’s opera retitled La Belle Vivette. Here we see Frayn as a playwright in its true meaning, as a maker rather than a writer of plays, as a craftsman and a problem-solver. He traces not only the history of each of the plays in its original form, which is indeed a drama in itself, but the history of his journey to rendering the Russian classics accessible and meaningful to a Western audience without losing their integrity and authenticity. The tiniest nuance can of course be of the greatest significance in translation, such as Nina’s line in The Seagull where she states, in all previous translations, ‘I am a seagull,’ indicating she is clearly mad and thinks she is a bird. Frayn’s translation gives, ‘I am the seagull,’ implying a rational recognition of her relation to a central image in the play. Similarly the line ‘Missed again!’ uttered by Vanya in Uncle Vanya — while it gets a laugh, occurring as it does when he fails to hit his target at point-blank range — eludes the fullest sense of the word Chekhov has chosen, which refers to any kind of mistake — all the mistakes of Vanya’s life, summed up in a moment.
Frayn’s book has something in it for writer, reader, actor, spectator, translator, historian, professional and layman alike. Affectionate towards his subject without being indulgent, Frayn is never pretentious and never impenetrable: this is writing on theatre as it ought to be.
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