This short play examines a theme from Anton Chekhov's short story, 'The Lady with the Little Dog', which Chekhov wrote in Yalta in the autumn of 1899. The Yalta Game tells the story of an accountant who holidays alone, leaving his wife and family behind in Moscow. While away, he plays the game of amorous dalliance and seduction, and happens on a young wife with her pet dog. They have a brief affair and part forever. But back home, they both find themselves obsessed by reveries and meet again to embark on a future of duplicity, ecstasy and perhaps of love. Against all the odds, Brian Friel turns Chekhov’s melancholy love story into a touching and imaginative theatrical game and yet one that does more than justice to the delicacy of the original.
