Three Sisters

Director Greg Carroll’s production is only subtly reimagined.  Dialogue is perhaps too declamatory at times.  Particularly ‘thoughtful’ or personal speeches seem to be delivered to the audience rather than to other characters.  Acting styles vary a little across the cast – but is the director’s intention to suggest that each of these people is in their own self-absorbed bubble?  They do play it that way.  But Carroll also creates some beautiful and expressive images.  At the very start, the loving bond of the sisters is conveyed without dialogue – and again at the end.  Throughout, Carroll’s blocking enhances story and dialogue.

Reimagined or not, what is perfectly clear here is that balance Chekhov finds between sympathy for his central characters - but without sentimentality - and his clear-eyed moral judgements about them.  Eldest sister Olga (a touching performance from Mia Landgren), dressed in grey, is always hurrying, tired, washed out, but resigned to her lot as a teacher.  Spirited, restless – and sensual - middle sister Masha (Joanna Halliday) is trapped in a marriage to decent but so dull schoolteacher Kulygin (a very natural Simon Chandler).  Youngest sister Irina (Stella Carroll), only twenty-one, still idealistic, talks repeatedly about how ‘work’ will solve their problems.  They all yearn for Moscow, Moscow... and we know they (like Beckett characters) will never leave. 

Chekhov’s recurring theme of fine speeches and excuses (at times on the brink of satire) in the face of encroaching, unstoppable change is still salient.  Colonel Vershinin (Gabriel Partington) makes rambling, unconsciously comic speeches about how the future will be utterly different – and it will be, but not as he imagines it.  Partington goes almost misty eyed as delivers this evasive waffle – and we are tempted to laugh.  Old doctor Chebutykin (played by Chris Connelly too likeable for us to condemn), the sisters’ uncle, complains of losing his memory – and maybe killing his patients – but it’s no more than self-pity. 

Most powerful is the trajectory of Natasha (Belle Hansen), married to artistic, violin playing gambler Andrei; she’s a pushy, ambitious bourgeoise with an unstoppable will to power.  Hansen (whom we also know as a brilliant director) wrings every drop of comedy, fake sentiment, and bullying nastiness from the role.  At times, she might almost be in another play, but she is so entertaining she gets away with it. 

Equally entertaining if for different reasons is Joanna Halliday’s Masha - the sheer physicality of her performance makes her character’s frustrations palpable and moving.  When she hopelessly throws herself into Vershinin’s arms, we feel deeply for her – we understand, we forgive - even if at the same time we know what a silly bunny she is.  And by contrast, how cold her Masha can be when her husband poor Kulygin tells her how he loves her, no matter what. 

The story is still set across three or so years in the late 19^th century.  The cast wear 19^th century costumes – the women particularly finely and appropriately dressed by Amelia Carroll.  The furniture is still heavy 19^th century.  Chekhov’s near stock characters are the old family retainers – Nurse Anfisa (Rosemary Johns, dignified but fragile), and the old butler (a delightful Syd Brisbane), on the edge of senility – both touching minor characters - even as they suggest the family’s clinging to the past. 

What can drive you crazy, in this or any production of Three Sisters, is the tension driven by the sense of stasis.  That for all the whingeing and complaining, no one is going to do anything about their situation.  Except Natasha.  Irina talks about work, work, work – but she never does any.   Her would-be husband, nobleman Tuzenbach (a comically self-regarding performance from Laurence Young) takes five years to decide, finally, to propose.  A dark twist – dark that is, for Chekhov – is Solyony (a chillingly creepy River Stevens), a man who perfumes his fingers because, no matter what he does, they smell like a corpse...

There’s a maybe apocryphal story about how Chekhov attended a rehearsal of one of his plays, being directed by Stanislavsky – no doubt with all due emotion.  Frustrated, Chekhov shouted from the back of the theatre, ‘It’s a comedy! 

He wants us to take these characters seriously and to see through them, laugh at them – and perhaps squirm and wince in recognition.  This production does that very well.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Steven Mitchell Wright