Durang flings all kinds of references into his word processor: Angelina Jolie, Snow White, Maggie Smith, global warming, Norma Desmond, William Penn, "Peter Pan, " the HBO show "Entourage, " Lindsay Lohan, ancient Greek drama, voodoo and, as the title suggests, a big dollop of Anton Chekhov.

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Even Valdez, the pretty salmon-fishing town on Prince William Sound at the foot of the mountains, receives an average of eight feet of snow on its rooftops each winter.

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William Jenkins, a high hill farmer from Manmoel near Blackwood, Caerphilly county, said there is little snow where he is but a cold, penetrating wind which leaves new born lambs at risk of being frozen to death.

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