THE PROPOSAL & THE BEAR St James Studio, London SW1

Butterfly Theatre Company performs two one-act comedies by Chekhov at lunchtime. The audience sits at tables. Drinks and lunch bags can be purchased. One-act plays were highly popular in the Victorian and Edwardian era as curtain-raisers and afterpieces. It might be a good moment to revive the genre. There are so many one-act plays by famous classical and modern writers waiting to be revived. Chekhov began his theatrical career in his late twenties, writing vaudeville sketches, which he constantly disparaged as piffling, but which were nevertheless hugely popular, establishing him as one of the leading boulevard playwrights. The Proposal is a joke (Chekhov’s word) about a bourgeois young couple whose courting quickly turns into a slanging match. They are both snobs and deserve each other. It will be a marriage made in hell. Matthew McPherson is very funny as a hypochondriac The Bear was Chekhov’s most successful play in his lifetime and made him a lot of money. A middle-aged landowner calls on a young widow to collect the debt her late husband should have paid. Their quarrelling leads to a hysterical duel with pistols. Edward Hulme, the director, takes the farce to an erotic level which would have surprised the Russian censors.