Three Sisters

by Anton Chekhov

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 19 March 2025

Caroline Steinbeis directs Michell Terry as Olga, Shannon Tarbet as Masha and Ruby Thompson as Irina in Rory Mullarkey's translation of Chekhov's Three Sisters. 

The candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is an ideal space for rendering the intimacy verging on claustrophobic intensity of a Russian household existing on faded grandeur (their father was a General) and over-optimistic hopes for the future - fulfilment in work or fulfilment in Moscow seem to keep the sisters going, though Olga is crushed by her work, Masha is disillusioned in her marriage, and Irina enthuses about the ennobling prospects of work without having yet had to try it. Their brother Andrei (Luke Thompson) meanwhile dreams of becoming a professor - or is it that his sisters dream this for him? - and in the meantime giddily marries a local social climber Natalya (Natalie Klamar).

Soldiers are billeted in the town and provide a welcome distraction, though they too are marking time. Tuzenbach (Michael Abubakar) and Solyony (Richard Pyros) both fall for Irina, while the philosophising Vershinin (Paul Ready) attracts Masha. Despite these developments a certain listlessness pervades the play, as the characters talk and talk but rarely converse: even Tuzenbach's declaration to Irina is baffled by her less than enthusiastic response, while we have to infer a dalliance between Masha and Vershinin and wonder at the credulity of her husband Kulyigin (Keir Charles). In a clever twist, Natalya's infidelity (also obvious to all except her spouse) is with someone whom we never see.

The first act is comparatively brightly lit for Irina's name day celebrations and the first arrival of the soldiers, but the middle two acts take place at night time (though not the same night) and the overhead candelabra are extinguished; the light sources are simply the candles on the pillars and those held close to the face by the actors. This cleverly focuses the attention on the tell-tale signs of stress and impatience particularly among the women. By the time of the second act Andrei is married and Natalya has begun her take-over of the management of the house, relying on a cunning mixture of sentimentality over her children (who could criticise her for wanting what's best for them?) and a ruthless way with servants and old fashioned views of loyalty. The sisters are powerless to stop her and Andrei has retreated to gambling and domestic inaction.

The third act, notionally in the bedroom now shared by Olga and Irina (since Natalya's son "needs" the healthier atmosphere of what had been Irina's bedroom) is here envisaged as a general space at the top of a stairway cleverly revealed in the stage floor. It's hardly surprising that menfolk retreating from the fire raging through the town should bed down for a while here until they are evicted in the name of propriety. Even more effectively, when Andrei embarks on his long self-justification, where it might be presumed that his sisters can hear him while modestly behind screens, here, they have retreated to further annexes, leaving him talking to no-one. This serves to reinforce the general unwillingness of so many of the characters to face up to unpleasantness of any sort: Olga's tired "oh, leave it until tomorrow, Andrei" is quite understandable at the end of an exhausting night, but also fatally symptomatic of a pervasive procrastination.

In the open air again, the final act in which hopes are dashed is a masterclass in dramatic tension: a duel is obviously going to happen but no-one will directly talk about it, and in the meantime the departure of the soldiers prompts only banal farewells.

The cast performs well, the verbosity of some of the characters, and their infuriating blindnesses, are convincingly presented without unduly exasperating the audience. Intriguingly there is more unbridled bad temper on display than in other productions of the play as tempers fray: Masha is obviously highly strung from the beginning; Solyony (the definitely rejected suitor) verges on the psychopathic; Natalya veers quickly from a nauseating wheedling to perhaps confected but still vicious rage when crossed. In this intimate theatrical space the sisters are more certainly trapped no matter what.

Uncle Vanya

by Anton Chekhov (in a version by Conor McPherson)

seen at the Harold Pinter Theatre on 11 March 2020

Ian Rickson directs Toby Jones as Vanya, Richard Armitage as Doctor Astrov, Ciarán Hinds as the Professor, Aimee Lou Wood as Sonya, Anna Calder-Marshall as Nana, Rosalind Eleazer as Helena, Peter Wight as 'Waffles' Telegin and Dearbhla Molloy as Grandmaman in  production beautifully designed by Rae Smith - a ramshackle cavernous room taking up the entire stage space of the theatre, with the unadorned back wall and a massive supporting girder - and even safety notices on two of the doors - somehow not looking out of place in the dustladen gloom.

Though not exactly dressed in the late nineteenth century - Sonya and Grandmaman both weaer capacious pantaloons - the sense of a time at a loose end, with enervated overly intellectual but woefully underemployed men and frustrated women is marvellously rendered by the whole cast, from the Professor's overweening pomposity and self-regard, through Astrov's idealism battling with his despair, to Sonya's crushed hopefulness and Helena's bored and exasperated disillusionment with the choices she has made. Because every character is strongly delineated, it is impossible to miss the fact that none of the m really understands any of the others, sidetracked as each is by his or her own obsessions and frustrations. All this can lead to delightful sparks of social comedy as well as to heartbreaking intimations of loss, ennui and future blight.

Three Sisters

by Anton Chekhov

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 16 May 2019

Rebecca Frecknall directs atsy Ferran as Olga, Pearl Chanda as Masha and Ria Zmitrowicz as Irina (the three sisters) with Freddie Meredith as their brother Andrey, Lois Chimimba as his wife Natasha, Peter McDonald as Vershinin and Elliott Levy as Masha's husband Kulygin in Cordelia Lynn's adaptation of Chekhov's play.

The provincial setting in which the children of an army officer, adrift without occupation or responsibility, fixated on returning to Moscow as the solution to their anxious unease, attempt to give meaning to their lives, is often presented in a nostalgic haze of imagined Russian-ness. Here, the setting is more abstract, the stage a raised square set at an angle in the Almeida's curved acting space, with virtually no props apart from chairs, with a stairway against the bare brick wall leading up to a notiona study where Andrey often sits brooding, perhaps aware of what is happening below him, perhaps just sulking or bemoaning the trajectory of his life. The sisters meanwhile attempt to cope - Olga, older and unmarried, gradually engulfed in teaching, Masha, married to the pedantic schoolmaster but disillusioned after her initial infatuation with him and desperate to revive excitement with a lover, and Irina, optimistic about work as an ennobling act but appalled by the banal realities of the jobs she tries.

Young Chekhov

Platonov, Ivanov and The Seagull reversioned by David Hare

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 13 August 2016

Anton Chekhov's three early plays - the first of which was not performed in his lifetime - were presented last year at the Chichester Festival as a unified insight into the dramatist's development. Most of the original cast have been reassembled to present the plays in London this summer. The three plays were directed by Jonathan Kent and the sets - variations on Russian country estates - were designed by Tom Pye.

In many ways the best way to appreciate this ambitious undertaking is to see all three plays on the same day. Patterns and themes emerge - there are references to Hamlet in each play; there is a significant part for a doctor in each play, though the three doctors are utterly different in style and personality; there is an idealistic but frustrated young man in each, colliding with an idealistic and frustrated young woman with painful consequences; surrounding the main characters are an assortment of hangers-on, older but not necessarily wiser relatives who are part of a wider and often stifling society. But the fascination of all this is that though the situations may appear similar in bald summary, the tone of each play, and the way the characters interact (or fail to interact) in each, makes for a wide and rich spectrum of human behaviour. Chekhov is revealed to be the master of social comedy and romantic melodrama just as much as his more well-known bittersweet examination of thwarted idealism and crippling ennui. 

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

by Christopher Durang

seen at the Gladstone Theatre, Ottawa, on 22 May 2016

The play takes themes from several plays by Anton Chekhov and blends them into a pastiche set in New England. This production by Plosive Productions was directed and designed by David Whiteley and featured Chris Ralph as Vanya, Mary Ellis as Sonia, Beverley Wolfe as Cassandra, Teri Loretto-Valentik as Masha, Drew Moore as Spike and Sarah Finn as Nina.

Here Sonia is the adoptive sister of Vanya and Masha; she and Vanya run the estate on behalf of their absent sister Masha, who claims to be earning all the necessary finds by being a Hollywood celebrity. Nina is a stage-struck neighbour, Cassandra the doom-laden house-help, and Spike is Masha's toy-boy.

Uncle Vanya

by Anton Chekhov

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 5 March 2016

Chekhov's play has been adapted by the director Robert Icke so that its setting is less obviously Russian (Vanya is 'Uncle Johnnie') and also later than the nineteenth century (there is a telephone, and electric light in the house). It features Paul Rhys as John (Vanya), Jessica Brown Findlay as Sonya, Tobias Menzies as Michael (Astrov, the doctor), and Susan Wooldridge as Maria (John's mother and Sonya's grandmother), with Hilton McRae as Alexander (the professor) and Vanessa Kirby as his second wife Elena, Richard Lumsden as Cartwright (Telyeghin) and Ann Queensberry as the nanny. The production is designed by Hildegard Bechtler.

On a raised platform of wooden boards, with posts at each corner supporting a black roof or canopy, there are a few props, and an old nanny and a visiting doctor. Conversation is desultory, the old woman offering tea and complaining about the disruption to the routines of the household, the doctor absorbed with signs of his slow disintegration into mediocrity. Slowly, the whole platform revolves, while a neighbour and the members of an ill-assorted family appear and disappear. The management of the estate, which normally occupies Sonya and her uncle Johnnie, has lapsed during the visit of Sonya's father and stepmother who seem to have exerted a fatal lassitude simply by being there, city folk ill at ease in the country. But John is attracted to Elena, his brother-in-law's new wife (Sonya's mother was his sister), and this adds to the simmering tensions.