In different periods of one's life as a director - as well as of a spectator or reader - one finds in Chekhov something which seems particularly significant at a specific moment in time. I have now done two productions of Uncle Vanya: the first, in 1969, at the Central Soviet Army Theatre (now the Russian Army Theatre) in Moscow; and then the second production in 1991, in Turkey at the Istanbul Municipal Theatre. Each done in different countries, and at different times. In those intervening years, I have never been parted from Chekhov, whether in my thinking or in my practical work. I directed Three Sisters in Turkey (1988), and The Cherry Orchard as a television production (Moscow, 1976), as well as in the theatre in Kirgizia (1983), in Turkey (1986) and in Poland (1997). But my memories of those first encounters with Uncle Vanya remain uniquely precious. When I recall my memories, thoughts and experiences of that work, I always feel something had changed in that period of time, both in me and in my perception of the play. Yet at the same time, something has also always remained immutable.

These were Chekhov's words to an actor during the rehearsals for the Moscow Art Theatre premiere of The Seagull, and it encapsulates the ongoing struggles Chekhov would have with Stanislavsky's productions. Chekhov was a Symbolist playwright trapped in a Naturalist theatre. In his texts the settings were described with a stark, yet poetic minimalism and could be seen as part of the Symbolist project to fuse interior and exterior states of mind. For Chekhov, as for Maeterlinck whom he greatly admired, the concrete elements of the external world were manifestations of emotional states of being; what Richard Wagner called 'soul states'. The settings are virtual roadmaps to the psyche, and so complete is the identification of the character with the decor that if the setting were taken away the character would cease to exist. 'I love this house,' says Madame Ranevsky in Act Three of The Cherry Orchard. 'Without the cherry orchard my life would lose its meaning, and if it must really be sold then go and sell me with the orchard.'

The geographical settings in Chekhov's literature are extensive: his characters are found in small villages; in provincial towns; on a nobleman's estate; in the two 'capitals' - Moscow and St. Petersburg; in the Caucasus and the Crimea, Siberia and Sakhalin. There are also endless roads and numerous encounters on country lanes, tracks on the steppe, and encounters in railway stations and on trains.

No less diverse is the social world populated by his characters: intellectuals, merchants, peasants, landlords, shepherds, fishermen, firemen, military of all ranks and civil servants of all grades, policemen and thieves, actors and scholars, students, doctors, teachers, lawyers and clergymen - of different generations, ages, levels of education and culture.

But the geographical dimension, the social backgrounds and professions are not as important as Russia's inner state and the way this shapes people's individual destinies. The purpose of this chapter is precisely to explore this interdependence, while the subject may be defined as 'turn-of-the-century Russia' through Chekhov's eyes or - to put it another way - 'Chekhov's images of Russia'. This interdependence is explored from a variety of perspectives: the vastness of Russia's territory and the abundance of its nature as the Russians' existential context, and Russia in the contexts of the world, and of the universe. Chekhov's judgements are never categorical or blunt, just as the symbolic 'images' of Russia are never unequivocal, and reflect the complexities and controversies, the combination of light and darkness, good and evil, that typify the Russian way of life and Russian sensibilities at that time.

Chekhov was a first-generation intellectual: his grandfather was a former serf, his father a small shopkeeper. 'There is peasant blood in me', he wrote (Letters, vol. V, p. 283). But in the history of Russian culture, the name of Chekhov has become synonymous with intelligence, good upbringing - and refinement. How did these qualities come to be acquired by a provincial boy who spent his crucial formative years up to the age of nineteen in a small Russian town? Taganrog, Chekhov's birthplace, was typical of Russian provincial towns of the time: taverns, little shops, 'not a single sign without a spelling mistake'; oil lamps, and wastelands thickly overgrown with weeds. Chekhov's memories, of his 'green' years growing up in Taganrog, are full of references to puddles and unpaved streets.

Unlikely as it might seem today, the appearance in 1923 of a previously unpublished and untitled play by Chekhov seems to have aroused little interest in Russia outside literary circles. However, it is not surprising that it was ignored by the Soviet theatre of that time. Firstly, Chekhov was about the last dramatist likely to excite the new revolutionary avant-garde. Secondly, the Moscow Art Theatre was still in the grip of the artistic paralysis to which it had been reduced by the events of 1917, and seventeen more years were to elapse before it staged a new production of Chekhov. Finally, the prospect of a ramshackle text almost three times the length of any other Chekhov play would have deterred most theatres even at the best of times. In fact, it was not until 1957 that the work received its Russian premiere, though by that time it had been staged around the world in various versions and under a curious variety of titles.

Chekhov's relationship with the Moscow Art Theatre is a story in itself, and quite a tangled one at that. It is the story of how Chekhov's theatre came into being and Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko's struggle to master the poetics of his drama. It is the story of how even in the dramatist's lifetime the Chekhov canon evolved into a theatrical straitjacket from which it became necessary to break free. It is the story of the deep divisions between theatre and dramatist involving the most fundamental questions concerning the art of theatre: the precise genre of Chekhov's plays; his view of character and his attitude towards the whole historical development of Russia itself. In an attempt to console Stanislavsky after Chekhov's death, Nemirovich-Danchenko said: 'We had already lost Chekhov with The Cherry Orchard. He would never have written anything else.' This merciless verdict expresses all the tension that existed between Chekhov and the Moscow Art Theatre.

Chekhov is often internationally considered 'the Shakespeare of the twentieth century'. In his homeland, his plays have become part and parcel not only of the Russian theatre but also of the national lifestyle or psyche, an inexhaustible source of spiritual endurance. We take this so much for granted that we assume that it has always been so, but this is not an accurate view: Chekhov's climb to the stature of the author of The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard was long and difficult, while the process of creating Chekhov's theatre was even more laborious and painful.

In literal terms, the history of Chekhov in the Russian theatre dates back to autumn 1887, when his comedy, Ivanov, was premiered at the Korsh Theatre, a private theatre in Moscow. In the following decade, theatres in Moscow, St Petersburg and in the provinces produced almost everything the young Chekhov was energetically writing for the stage. Although this may seem a good beginning, this period in Chekhov's career as a playwright should more appropriately be seen as a prologue.

This is not the innocuous subject it may seem at first glance. Representation in art has a long and debated history; representation in the theatre is complex and is now being systematised by performance theory. Moreover, isolating women characters entails another specialised area of criticism. Feminist approaches to literature and the theatre have ensured closely argued views from both male and female critics, who have been made wary of gender-centred interests and judgements. I find myself in the position of a woman scholar writing about women. It is almost certain that I will fail to meet the expectations, whether negative or positive, of at least some sections of the readership of this book. I shall approach this topic wishing neither to engage with the heavily jargonised language used in performance theory, nor to assume a stance which is feminist or anti-feminist, but to acknowledge and to have learnt from each one.

In 1981 I adapted The Seagull, resetting it on an Anglo-Irish estate in the West of Ireland, with the time of the action placed in the late nineteenth century.

The first reason why I did this was, quite simply, because I was asked to do so by Max Stafford-Clark, then artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre. Max felt, and I agreed with him, that some English language productions of Chekhov tended towards a very English gentility where the socially specific Chekhov tended to be lost in polite vagueness. He believed that an Anglo-Irish setting would provide a specificity, at once removed from, and at the same time comprehensible to, an English audience. He also felt that an Irish setting would more easily allow the rawness of passion of the original to emerge, the kind of semi-farcical hysteria, which Chekhov uses in the scenes between Arkadina, Treplyov and Trigorin in Act Three, for example: a kind of rough theatricality somewhat removed from polite English comedy but common enough in the Irish comic tradition.

Even to those who loathed Chekhov's plays, his unorthodox drama was marked by the techniques of a short-story writer who refused to limit his imagination to the confines of the stage or meet its demands for intrigue, denouement, climax, let alone recognise its genres of comedy and tragedy. An all-controlling author-narrator refused to get off the stage. In November 1889 the actor-manager Lensky told Chekhov after the rejection of The Wood Demon by the Imperial Theatre Committee not to write plays: 'I'll say one thing: write long stories. Your attitude to the stage and to dramatic form is too contemptuous, you respect them too little to write a drama. This form is more difficult than narrative form, but you, forgive me, have been too spoiled by success to study dramatic form properly ... or to come to love it.'

Chekhov's words sum up the motivation for his comedy: laughter as medicine, and a vital prerequisite for any treatment of his fellow human beings. Implicit is the sense that laughter - and comedy - are restorative, and that the objectivity and detachment which laughter may produce could inoculate us against such human diseases as pomposity, hypocrisy, selfcentredness, laziness, or - the worst of all - wasting life.

It is Doctor Chekhov who wrote those words, and beneath them lies a serious but non-judgemental sense that laughter is curative and healthy. Chekhov's comedy is therefore not only a stylistic feature in his works, but is also a vital part of his philosophy. It is the point where content and form meet, the one usually inseparable from the other. And this, in turn, relates to the subject matter of his works - not the artificial and complex, though enjoyable, plot lines of farces by Labiche or Feydeau, or their third-rate imitators, but the daily lives of ordinary people.

Ian McKellen has played more Chekhov roles than any other actor of his generation. These have included Konstantin in The Seagull in 1961-2 for The Belgrade Theatre, Coventry; Tusenbach for radio in a Caedmon production of Three Sisters, 1966; Konstantin in a BBC Radio production of The Seagull in 1967; a radio version of Chekhov's story 'A Provincial Life', dramatised by Peter Gill in 1970; Svetlovidov in Swan Song for the opening of the (then) new Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, November 1971; Khrushchev in The Wood-Demon, the Actors' Company in 1973, directed by David Giles, in Ronald Hingley's translation, Edinburgh Festival and then touring; Andrey (a part taken over by Timothy Spall for the Stratford run and televised production) in Trevor Nunn's Royal Shakespeare Company production of Three Sisters in the 1978 touring production (see chapter 9 in this volume); Lopakhin in a revival of The Cherry Orchard, directed and translated with Lilia Sokolova by Mike Alfreds at The National Theatre, designed by Paul Dart, opened December 1985 (first performed at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, September 1981, with Roger Sloman as Lopakhin); Platonov in Michael Frayn's version, Wild Honey, of Chekhov's unfinished play Platonov, directed by Christopher Morahan, The National Theatre, 1984-6; Vanya in Sean Mathias' production of Uncle Vanya, translated by Pam Gems, with Antony Sher as Astrov and Janet McTeer as Yelena, Royal National Theatre Studio production, then the Cottesloe, National Theatre, 1991. Most recently (October 1998) he has played Dr Dorn in Jude Kelly's production of The Seagull at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, designed by Robert Innes-Hopkins, in a translation/version by Tom Stoppard.