The Present
Upton’s version solves some problems and creates others. Updated to the 1990’s, the play is no longer about life in Tsarist Russia but the post-Perestroika world of Glasnost. While the original has characters talk about how much better life will be in the future, the new version has the characters wax nostalgic about the recent past but also talk about the challenge of the new Russia in the present. It is not obvious for much of the first scene that the play takes place in the Russian country. [more]