An arrogant actor in a road-show troupe boasts about an erotic adventure in another town. But it turns out that that girl in question is known to the man listening to the story: She is his niece. He demands that the actor retract the story. The actor, a cad, willingly does so. He lies, saying that the story about the girl was a lie.
Chekhov’s disgust with actors seems practically bottomless. It’s difficult to figure. I could understand this antipathy if one of his plays had been butchered by bad actors. And that did in fact happen, but not until 1887! (The disastrous first performance of the play “Ivanov.”) But “The Jeune Premiere,” and other stories like it that slag actors, appeared before then.
There’s actually something quite Chekhovian about Chekhov and his unstinting hatred of actors. I could easily imagine a story featuring a playwright (and a Lothario, to boot, which is what Chekhov was) who detests actors and considers them weak, wimpy and immoral.
Instead, we get this tale and others–perfectly fine but not particularly special.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
The most interesting of Chekhov’s stories involving actors and the theater in general is probably “The Requiem,” but I’ve recommended that one already, tying it to “A Dreary Story,” both of which feature young women who run off for a life in, or alongside, the theater. Another tale of actors and the theater is “An Actor’s End,” which is a relatively sympathetic portrait of a man at the end of his life, rueing the day that he left home to become an actor.
A Chekhov Circus 