In the introduction, Brian Friel identifies the novelty of Turgenev's drama "where psychological and poetic elements create a theatre of moods and where the action resides in internal emotion and secret turmoil". His lively, comic play describes the course of a passionately eventful summer month in which Natalya, luminous, anguished and possessed by love, is left to recover a measure of happiness after her turbulent disquiet.