But it is not to be. For the next two and half hours we are presented with a montage of misery and despair piled high and deep as snow in a Siberian February, as each of the Prozorov sisters and their coterie discovers that with age comes disappointment. Marriages fail, family and friends disappoint, wealth departs, and life is a continuous exercise in existential nothingness.
Cheery huh. Well, that’s not the point. What has always fascinated me about Chekhov’s plays is the time when he was writing them. Russia was collapsing under the weight of a serf based land system akin to slavery, with an indolent upper class that could barely communicate with their own servants. The servants spoke Russian, the nobles spoke French.
While industrialization was changing the face of America and Western Europe, Russia was still mired in an aguarian based system where labor -- or any sort of work -- was considered low. Of all the plays in the Chekhovian cannon, Three Sisters is probably the one that modern audience must most appreciate in the context and times in which it was written. While the central story line of The Cherry Orchard concerns the loss of property and the downward spiral of the upper class, Three Sisters is about the personal feelings and longings associated with such dramatic societal change. These are specific people in a time and place, and to understand them it is important to understand the times in which they are living.
Is their plight universal? Perhaps, but not so self consciously.
So we have Olga, Masha, and Irina. Three Sisters who live in provincial capital and dream of escape – Olga and Irina to Moscow, Masha into the arms of the Army Commandant and away from her failed marriage. We have Andrei, their brother, who once had a promising career as a scientist, but winds up mortgaging the family estate to support his gambling habit and trapped in loveless marriage to a shrieking virago. We have Ivan, an elderly friend and border who once loved the sister’s mother, but has now escaped into the bottle to forget his loneliness. And we have Vershinin, the Army Commandant, whose second wife has gone mad and longs for the very married but very vivacious Masha.
While each of Chekhov’s characters has their dreams, they are all stuck; stuck in time and place, with their feelings and desires descending into endless longing.
This is a bold production full of choices. Jessica Hecht play Olga with the giddy nervousness of a women who has spent far too many years bottling up her feelings and seems about to go mad. Jonathon Fried gives an over-the-top performance as Kulygin, Masha’s husband, a high school teacher content with his life, who can only watch as his beloved wife drifts farther and farther away. Rebecca De Witt, as Masha, is full of rage that quickly turns to passion in the arms of her forbidden lover. Natasha, Andrei’s wife, as performed by Cassie Beck, is every bit the evil monster she is meant to be.
One wonders why Director Michael Grief chose to place the Act One dining table in the back of the set, where key lines must be screamed to be heard; or why the Act Two finale set consists of a long ramp where characters must turn their back to the audience to see who is entering. It all seems a bit of jumbled mess, much like the characters on stage.
As the curtain descends, Irina repeats “Why must we suffer, if only we knew…if only we knew.” If you want a Russian history lesson and don’t mind watching lots of suffering in the process, Three Sisters is just the ticket.
--- July 26, 2008
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