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When a classic is transferred to the present time and place, does the material travel well? Can it be reasonably taken from its world and transplanted in ours? Sometimes the transfer works, as when Ian McKellen played
Richard III in a fascist 1930s Britain, and Gus Van Sant transmuted Henry IV into My Own Private Idaho. Sometimes it does not, as in this attempt to take Chekhov s Three Sisters out of 1901 in Russia and place in the faculty club of a modern American university.
It could be argued that Shakespeare s characters are more universal and Chekhov s more particular to time and place which is a strength of both. Because they are interior, the problems of Hamlet can be set anywhere, as Ethan Hawke proved by asking To be, or not to be? in the Action aisle at Blockbuster. But with Chekhov s Three Sisters, we can more easily imagine characters trapped together in a remote country house than believe their timely entrances and exits in a clubroom o