Born into a bourgeois family, Misail determines to find a way to lead an honest life free from privilege. To his father's disapproval and bewilderment, he renounces his heritage and becomes a workman before moving to the country to manage the estate of the girl that he marries. Over the course of a long summer, his burning sense of injustice and deep integrity exact a devastating forfeit.

Peter Gill's A Provincial Life, based on a novella by Anton Chekhov, opened at the Sherman Cymru, Cardiff, in March 2012 in a production by National Theatre Wales.