About the Play:

Picking Up Chekhov is a full-length comedy by Mansel Robinson. It turns out that giving a lift to a stranger wasn't such a good idea for a smart-alec teenager and her repo man father who take to the road to escape a looming custody order initiated by the man's bitter ex-wife. Picking Up Chekhov is a gripping family drama set in motion with a decision to pick up a hitch-hiker.

Picking Up Chekhov is a picaresque black comedy about, a two-bit repo-man, Sikorski, and his precocious teenaged daughter, Stevie. The dysfunctional duo takes off by car and heads east across the Prairies to escape an impending change in custody launched by Sikorski's bitter ex, Mona. Buried somewhere in the pair's stunted relationship – Stevie is precociously dramatic, Sikorski is mostly exasperated – lies a hope of somehow strengthening the bonds between them. But after stopping for the hitchhiker named Chekhov, father and daughter don't quite make it as far as they thought – until it's too late. A steadily darkening combination of mystery and modern morality play, Picking Up Chekhov is a whodunwhat with a message.

Picking Up Chekhov premiered in 2006 at the Martha Cohen Theatre by Alberta Theatre Projects during its National playRites Festival of New Plays in Calgary.

Cast: 5 female (two young performers), 4 male

What people say:

"… Robinson steers his story with crazy confidence, keeping us in suspense with a mystery plot and in stitches with his oddball characters and witty, acerbic dialogue … his final message of understanding and reconciliation comes poignantly seeping through … exuberantly theatrical …." — FFWD Weekly

"Robinson knows how to write like a fiend with no shortage of scorching lines, snippets of the sharpest dialogue I've heard since George F. Walker and a deep understanding of, among other dynamics, the father-daughter relationship." — Globe and Mail

"A sharp and tightly written work … quirky and inspired black comedy … a steadily darkening combination of mystery and modern morality play …." — Calgary Herald

About the Playwright:

Mansel Robinson is a Canadian playwright and fiction writer. He has written numerous plays which have been produced in Ottawa, Montreal, Kitchener, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, and Calgary. He has been writer in residence at the Berton House in Dawson City, the University of Windsor, Regina Public Library, and the Surrey Public Library. He has also worked in a lumber mill, fought fires, ran a blast furnace, worked the rails, and done a lot of backstage work at theatres. A twenty-year resident of Saskatchewan, he now lives in a small cabin down-river from his hometown of Chapleau, in Northern Ontario.