Michael Pennington has been a lead actor with the RSC, RNT and the Peter Hall Company. He was Joint Artistic Director of the English Shakespeare Company and has been a constant fixture on television and radio dramas. He has received Olivier Award nominations for roles in 'Romeo & Juliet', 'Strider' and 'Richard II', and a Sony Radio Award Nomination for his role in 'Jude the Obscure'. His solo show 'Anton Chekhov' has played at the National Theatre, the Old Vic, numerous festivals abroad, on radio and has been subject of a television documentary.

First published in hardback in 2003, Are You There Crocodile? is now available in paperback. Michael Pennington's work on his solo show about Anton Chekhov has taken London's 'Russian Actor' from the Trans-Siberian Railway to Soviet and post-Soviet Moscow, into the repertoires of the National Theatre and the Old Vic and across Europe.
Are You There, Crocodile? also includes accounts of his work on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Tolstoy's Strider and other Russian projects, as well as searching essays on how Chekhov's four masterpieces actually work in the theatre. This book is a study of the great writer, a partial autobiography, and, centrally, an actor's search for identification with the elusive Anton Chekhov himself "the story, humorously told, of an unlikely but tangible companionship."