Wild Honey: A Comedy by Michael Frayn from the Play without a Name by Anton Chekhov

by Michael Frayn, Anton Chekhov (source material)

Wild Honey is a 1984 adaptation by British playwright Michael Frayn of an earlier play by Anton Chekhov. The original work, a sprawling five-hour drama from Chekhov's earliest years as a writer, has no title, but is usually known in English as Platonov, after its principal character "Mikhail Platonov", a disillusioned provincial schoolmaster.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Fiction, Classics, Theatre

133 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1986

About the author

Michael Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy. His novels, such as Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong and Spies, have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction. His works often raise philosophical questions in a humorous context. Frayn's wife is Claire Tomalin, the biographer and literary journalist.

Reviews

[Paul Ataua · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Why do we never live the life we have within to lead”

Wild Honey is a two hour adaption of a much longer drama written by the Chekhov as a young man. It borders on farce, a farce with a dark ending. I am a lover of Chekhov’s short stories and yet I have never really got to grips with his theatrical works, so I thought I would try to revisit some of them. I didn’t get much from this and feel it was probably a mistake to start here. It’s Chekhov, but it doesn’t feel much like him.

[Etta Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A farce: themes-Frivolous Women, Vodka, alcoholism, Infidelity, weak men, bankruptcies, duels

[andrea hartmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Tonight, on this night of nights, let's simply live!”

Wild Honey by Michael Frayn is a dramatic play actually adapted from an unpopular Anton Chekhov play called Platonov. Michael Frayn took the elements of Platonov, but added characters, making the storyline more interweaving and intricate. Platonov is, essentially, the central character of this play, and helps to ignite the theme of "living life fully". When Platonov gets himself tangled in multiple affairs at once, but cannot satisfy the people who call out to him, he starts to struggle.

This play is marketed as a comedy, yet it doesn't exactly read that way on paper. Maybe it would be different as a staged play, with directing and actors and lights, but here it falls flat for many reasons. It has a lot of potential, with an intricate plot and dramatic characters, but because the characters are all similar sounding, referred to by one of their Russian middle or surnames, it gets confusing. This is obviously relative to Russian culture, and so it's not totally Frayn's fault that it can tend to get confusing, but he is the adapter, so he could honestly have made fewer characters related, making their surnames more distinct and therefore less likely to be confusing.

The plot is pretty realistic and grounded, just with some crazy characters. This is typical of a Chekhov play, but it could have been far more interesting if it was simpler to follow. If it was easier to follow, it might have been a 4-star read.

[Nick Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently the long untitled play (generally known after the central character Platonov), written by Chekhov when he was very young but put aside and only found after his death, is a treasure trove for Chekhov scholars, jammed packed with the motifs, themes, plot situations and character types that he would return to in his later writing, but the play itself is generally thought of as an unwieldy mess, too many things stuffed into it in a higgledy-piggledy manner. I don’t know if the original play has ever been staged, but it has often been adapted. Wild Honey is an adaptation and translation into English by Michael Frayn. The original was vastly shortened, characters and sub plots were thrown out, but I don’t know the original so cannot make any comparisons, I can only respond to Wild Honey as a work in itself, a collaboration between Chekov and Frayn. (Interestingly when originally staged in London in the 1980s, starring Ian McKellen, it was a critical success and a hit with the audiences, but when the production was transferred to Broadway – with a largely different cast, although McKellen still starred – it was a flop with critics and audience.) Chekhov’s mature work is often described as tragicomic – I’m not sure if tragic is the right word, but there is often a mix of humour and quiet desperation. Wild Honey, however, doesn’t so much blend the comic and the tragic, it’s more a mix of farce and melodrama. Frayn insists the farce is in the original text and he has left a lot of the melodrama out. Overall I found the farce the more successful. There is a complex plot where the men love the women but all the women love Platonov – I don’t know why, he’s not the most likeable of characters and it feels as though the young Chekhov was trying to provide a profound insight into the character of Woman. And the play is full of entrances and exits as the characters reconfigure their relationships – I imagine in a good production it is all very light and amusing. The melodrama works less well: Platonov, for instance, has bouts of self disgust and wishes he was dead while the women burst into tears – maybe this can also be treated as farcical, but otherwise it is the sort of stuff that gives melodrama a bad name. I suppose it is all quite fun, but I’m not sure it’s that much more than a frothy footnote to Chekhov’s career.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Village teacher Platonov's youthful ambitions are rekindled when Sofya arrives. Michael Frayn's adaptation stars Ian McKellen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qg3sy

[Andrew Hanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

kind of a middling superfluous man story, can’t all be bangers ig 😔

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to the BBC Radio version from 2010. You can tell that Chekhov was 20 when he wrote the original, but mostly not in a bad way- this play expresses well how he felt and thought a great deal about people's capacity to love and hate. Morbid in a certain way that a young adult can be, and better for it! This Michael Frayn adaptation feels like a good excavation of the most salient themes of Chekhov's work. I love the feeling of thaw from a cold, inward winter to a humid, maddening, and passionate summer. The ending is a bit goofy, but the tragicomic tone carries it. Ian McKellen gives a memorable of slightly overwrought performance for the BBC Radio production.

[Cary Boswell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A romantic farce of unfulfilled love, property worries, atmosphere of summer in Russia. Edited by Michael Frayn, it is much like On/OFF. Hero Platanov is a weak man who creates trouble for all his friends,.

[Camila · Rating 3 out of 5]

[3.5 stars]
Platonov, more like Mr. Bitches 😭😭😭

[Tal Taran · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Why do we never lead the life we have it within us to lead?”

I listened to a BBC production which had Ian McKellen starring as Platonov—funny and engaging.

[JohnM Koroly · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's always difficult to judge a stage playscript as reading material. One keeps imagining how it would look on stage and how different would be that experience. Having said that, Frayn's translation/adaptation of AC's "Platonov" does its original more than justice. Flawed characters elicit great sympathy. Brisk, literate dialogue.

[Paul Servini · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Tolstoy farce!? Apparantly, one of his earlier works and I think he pulled it off quite well. Then again, maybe it's not just a farce. There's that familiar cynicism in the play and a lot of the strife which arises out of human relationships.

[Michael Meeuwis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I quite preferred this adaptation of the Platonov material to the David Hare version--or rather, I liked the very particular purpose (well-constructed farce) to which this adaptation was put.

[Michael P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just as good the third time around.

[Nomad nimrod · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't like this.
I prefer his sadder plays.

[Nikolas Krieger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fav chekov I’ve read so far