Deftly securing creative latitude, A Version forwards Akunin’s own voice as he channels Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Chekhov’s The Seagull with the interpretive sensibility and chameleon skills of a playwright who speaks English well and Russian with native fluency, and who is also well aware of other ingenious renderings of famous originals. He is about to do more of a new staging than Stoppard did in his famous rewrite of Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead when he crafts in A Version, as well as in The Seagull, a most unusual dramatic transcreation. While remaining faithful to the original, A Version makes Hamlet live anew for contemporary audiences, engaging fresh perspectives that further expand on a porous engagement with Chekhov’s The Seagull. Doctor Dorn, the jeune premier who travels around the world for two years and twice brings Treplev back to life from his suicide attempts before shooting him, becomes an intriguing descendant of a very different Horatio, who has little in common with the contemplative philosopher of the original Hamlet. Bridging European cultures, Doctor Dorn and Horatio provide an opportunity for experiencing the imaginative potential of Shakespeare’s and Chekhov’s worlds in our times through A Version’s delightful, head-on theatrical encounter ingeniously steeped into the detective genre. (Ileana Alexandra Orlich)