Fortune's Fool (French's Acting Edition S.) - Softcover

Turgenev, Ivan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0573019711 ISBN 13: 9780573019715

Publisher: Samuel French Ltd, 2002

Synopsis

Genre: Comedy

Characters: 7 males, 2 females, extras

Scenery: Interior

Alan Bates and Frank Langella won Tony, Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk awards for their Broadway performances in this acclaimed adaptation of Turgenev's classic exploration of the delicious paradox of humor and despair found in casually inflicting cruelty. The return of Olga Petrovna and her husband to her deceased parents' country manor should be a happy event for Kuzovkin, the house's resident penniless gentleman, but his friend Ivanov fears it will be disastrous for his comrade. All is going well when a neighbor arrives, a rich man whose favorite pastime is humiliating those he considers to be his inferiors. In no time, the "gentlemen" are plying Kuzovkin with drink and exposing his pathetic history layer by layer. Finally, in a drunken rage, he reveals a family secret that challenges their very identity, winning back what has been his all along but unable to reclaim his honor.

About this title

Review

"Reshaped in Mike Poulton's well-spoken adaptation..."Fortune's Fool is blessed with the sort of dazzling, quick-stroke character portraits one associates with Turgenev."

"A mix of wit and heart that many of today's comic writers would do well to study." (Elysa Gardner, "USA Today")

"Reshaped in Mike Poulton''s well-spoken adaptation . . . "Fortune''s Fool" is blessed with the sort of dazzling, quick-stroke character portraits one associates with Turgenev." (Ben Brantley, "The New York Times")

"A mix of wit and heart that many of today''s comic writers would do well to study." (Elysa Gardner, "USA Today")
"Reshaped in Mike Poulton's well-spoken adaptation . . . "Fortune's Fool" is blessed with the sort of dazzling, quick-stroke character portraits one associates with Turgenev." (Ben Brantley, "The New York Times")
"A mix of wit and heart that many of today's comic writers would do well to study." (Elysa Gardner, "USA Today")

About the Author

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born in 1818 in the Province of Orel, and suffered during his childhood from a tyrannical mother. After the family had moved to Moscow in 1827 he entered Petersburg University where he studied philosophy. When he was nineteen he published his first poems and, convinced that Europe contained the source of real knowledge, went to the University of Berlin. After two years he returned to Russia and took his degree at the University of Moscow. In 1843 he fell in love with Pauline Garcia-Viardot, a young Spanish singer, who influenced the rest of his life; he followed her on her singing tours in Europe and spent long periods in the French house of herself and her husband, both of whom accepted him as a family friend. He sent his daughter by a sempstress to be brought up among the Viardot children. After 1856 he lived mostly abroad, and he became the first Russian writer to gain a wide reputation in Europe; he was a well-known figure in Parisian literary circles, where his friends included Flaubert and the Goncourt brothers, and an honorary degree was conferred on him at Oxford. His series of six novels reflect a period of Russian life from 1830s to the 1870s: they are Rudin (1855), A House of Gentlefolk (1858), On the Eve (1859; a Penguin Classic), Fathers and Sons (1861), Smoke (1867) and Virgin Soil (1876). He also wrote plays, which include the comedy A Month in the Country; short stories and Sketches from a Hunter s Album (a Penguin Classic); and literary essays and memoirs. He died in Paris in 1883 after being ill for a year, and was buried in Russia."

Edition details

• Publisher: Samuel French Ltd
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0573019711
• ISBN 13: 9780573019715
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 74