12.  Beau ténébreux: “Dark handsome stranger.”

13.  Quelle tirade!: “What a tirade!”

14.  Paul de Kock . . .Montfermeil: Paul de Kock (1793–1871) was a prolific novelist of Parisian low life. He published The Milkmaid of Montfermeil in 1827.

15.  Souvent femme varie: “Woman often changes.”

16.  Provincial Talleyrand: Prince Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord (1754–1838), served as minister in French governments from Louis XIV on through the Revolution, Napoleon I, Louis XVIII, Charles X and Louis-Philippe, and represented France at the Congress of Vienna. A skillful diplomat and politician, he is sometimes portrayed as a schemer and even a traitor.

Production History

PRODUCTION HISTORY

This translation of A Month in the Country premiered at Williamstown Theatre Festival (Jenny Gersten, Artistic Director; Stephen M. Kaus, Producer) in Williamstown, Massachusetts, on August 1, 2012. The director was Richard Nelson; the set design was by Takeshi Kata, the costume design was by Susan Hilferty, the lighting design was by Japhy Weideman, the sound design was by Drew Levy; the production stage manager was Eileen Ryan Kelly. The cast was:

About the Authors

IVAN TURGENEV, one of the major Russian prose writers, a slightly older contemporary of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, was born in the town of Orel, two hundred miles southwest of Moscow, in 1818, into a family of wealthy landowners. He attended the University of St. Petersburg, and from 1838 to 1841 studied philosophy and history at the University of Berlin. He wrote ten plays between 1843 and 1852, before turning definitively to prose fiction. Turgenev spent much of his adult life abroad, chiefly in France, where he died in the town of Bougival, near Paris, in 1883.

RICHARD NELSON’S plays include the four-play series The Apple Family: Scenes from Life in the Country (That Hopey Changey Thing, Sweet and Sad, Sorry and Regular Singing), Nikolai and the Others, Farewell to the Theatre, Conversations in Tusculum, How Shakespeare Won the West, Frank’s Home, Rodney’s Wife, Franny’s Way, Madame Melville, Goodnight Children Everywhere, New England, The General from America, Misha’s Party (with Alexander Gelman), Two Shakespearean Actors and Some Americans Abroad. He has written the musicals James Joyce’s The Dead (with Shaun Davey) and My Life with Albertine (with Ricky Ian Gordon), and the screenplays for the films Hyde Park-on-Hudson and Ethan Frome. He has received numerous awards, including a Tony (Best Book of a Musical for James Joyce’s The Dead), an Olivier (Best Play for Goodnight Children Everywhere) and two New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards (James Joyce’s The Dead and The Apple Family). He is the recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; he is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He lives in upstate New York.