Three Sisters: Challenging Their Audiences

Not to say the production is without flaws, but it is a tribute to one of the 20th century’s great literary giants and, at the same time, a breathtaking leap of faith for a small, unfunded collective to do what so many larger wealthier companies do not, i.e.: challenge their audiences with complex, nuanced material, and a large ensemble cast of 13 actors.

 

Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904), first achieved fame as a short story writer  producing over 200 works in that genre, and is generally regarded by many who followed in his footsteps as the father of the modern short story. He wrote in an entirely new way, breaking from the maudlin, saccharine, melodramatics of the late 19th century, and examining his characters minutely from an piercingly unsentimental perspective, dredging into their psychologies and laying bare their frailties.

 

And he brought all of this artistic bravura and daring to the four great plays for which he is best known today. Happily for him (and for us), he was drawn  into collaboration with Stanislavsky and The Moscow Art Theatre. Together they forged deep psychological investigation together with performance and writing and in so doing founded the approach to theatre that, through many evolutions, is best summarized today as “The Method”.

 

In Three Sisters, Chekov jumps right in at the top of the play filling the stage with a collection of what, today might be fairly characterised as ‘nerds’; eccentrics and camp-followers (literally in the case of the soldiers amongst them) gathered together in the house of three sisters, Olga, Masha and Irina, and their geeky brother Andrei.

 

It is apparent that they are all familiar with one another and their lives revolve around the rituals and routines of this household. It is also apparent that all conversation and social interaction has long ago gelled into habit and stylised response. Seemingly comfortable and at ease in this environment it is soon revealed that there are fault lines underlying their small provincial society and there lay many crosscurrents of frustrated ambition and thwarted desires simmering beneath the polite conversation and spirited repartee.

 

Olga chafes under her many responsibilities, first as the eldest sister and major domo of the household, and second as a school teacher in the local academy. Her youngest sister, Irina, still in the first flower of her young girlhood, “tut-tut”s Olga’s laments and enthuses rapturously about the wonders of working, while spinning great dreams of the family’s return to Moscow. And finally there is Masha, the middle sibling, who sits apart from the rest reading and whistling as she makes a point of her separateness by moving even farther apart if she  is approached. She is a coiled spring of disdain and the picture of sullenness. Her marriage to Kulygin the nerdy, ineffectual schoolmaster has long ago paled in its attraction and she is reaping the whirlwind of terminal boredom and repressed desire. 

 

Rounding out this group of oddities is the elderly doctor, a long-time acquaintance of the family and apparently a “live-in” as well; Tuzenbach (the Baron), a flop-eared optimist who lectures everyone on the virtues of work while lamenting he has never done any; his friend Solyony, a most peculiar character who emerges only occasionally from his isolation to utter perplexing and vaguely menacing non sequiturs  - a kind of gothic figure with Asperger's syndrome. Last but not least we are introduced to Andrei,  brother to Olga, Masha and Irina, and a man for whom the Yiddish word ‘nebbish’ was positively invented. Spineless and anti-social, his marriage, later on, to the determinedly bourgeois Natalya coupled with a rampant gambling addiction will spell the end of their quiet, sheltered, provincial life.

 

The exception to this clunky bunch is Vershinin, the newly appointed commander of the local Battery, who sweeps in and ignites the fires of rebellion and passion in  Masha with his stormy philosophies and his visions of a happier, more productive life for mankind in the future. His handsome bearing and his self-assured nature are the cure for Masha’s malaise as the wife of a foolish, pedantic, schoolmaster and they soon embark on a very public romance. Likewise, Natalya,  Andrei’s gorgon of a wife who has overthrown her initial insecurities and revealed herself as a vicious bully, is also in the throes of an illicit liaison with a prominent member of the local council.

 

By the third act, in the aftermath of a fire the three sisters huddle together in Olga and Irina’s bedroom where they lament their fate. Andrei’s addiction has plunged them into debt and lost them the comfort of control over their own house and they are at the mercy of Natalya who unleashes on them the awesome fury of a bourgeois arriviste triumphing over her social betters. In the end Vershinin leaves Masha as his Battery is transferred on; the Baron is killed in a duel with his one-time friend Solyony, depriving Irina of her one chance at marrying; Olga is crushed with the added weight of being elevated to headmistress of the academy; Andrei has descended into the delusions of an addict, blaming his sisters for the loss of the house, and Masha gives in to her fate and returns home with her tedious schoolteacher husband.

 

By and large the cast rise to the occasion and do the playwright justice, although I was disappointed at some of the language conventions offered up in this new adaptation. I felt some attempts to modernise the language were too colloquial. Otherwise David Bloom’s Kulygin, Brahm Taylor’s Baron and Richard Newman’s Doctor Chebutykin, were a delight in their eccentric self-involvement and chatty irrelevance, especially as events turned and dissolved into dread seriousness for each one by the end. Bob Frazer was particularly effective as the soldier-philosopher Vershinin and Emma Slip as Masha stood out as the perfect foil for his attractions: all simmering rage and repressed sexuality.

 

Finally, special mention must be made of Pam Johnson’s fascinating set. Ringed with birch trees from the classic Russian forest, it’s appearance at first, aided by Itai Irdal’s delicate and clever lighting, is one of bucolic tranquility and peace, belying the tensions within. Later on in the third act there appears a stage floor cover, mirroring the birches, which converts the whole into a stylised cage. Perfect! These birds are truly trapped.

 

Jane Heyman has directed a gifted cast in one of the theatre’s true masterpieces. The result is humorous, serious and moving at the same time. She has done wonders with her ensemble approach and produced a work that should be seen. If you want a night of entertainment and absorption in a piece rarely done, run to the Cultch Studio and see this.