Theatre review: Three Sisters

For London's second major Three Sisters of the year the National filters Chekhov through Inua Ellams, coming up with a new play that's the same but different: Olya, Masha and Irina are now Lolo (Sarah Niles) Nne Chukwu (Natalie Simpson) and Udo (Racheal Ofori,) turn-of-the-twentieth century Russia becomes a remote part of Nigeria in the late 1960s, and the sisters long for Lagos, not Moscow. The characters have new names but in the first and fourth acts especially they follow their counterparts' trajectories closely, but it's in the middle two acts that the play most takes on a new identity. The play opens in 1967 in Biafra, at the start of what would turn out to be a failed bid for independence from Nigeria. It's youngest sister Udo's birthday, which is also the anniversary of their father's death; he was a general who moved the family from Lagos to a remote village to prepare the rebel army for the coming uprising, but with him gone they’re left with no purpose, and only soldiers for company.

The other big event is the arrival of the new commander, Ikemba (Ken Nwosu,) an idealist who kicks off one of the play’s major themes, of whether present-day suffering has a purpose that future generations will benefit from, and whether the belief that it does is the only thing that makes it bearable.

He also begins an affair with Nne Chukwu, the only married sister who finds in him a passion she’s never known until then. One thing Ellams’ adaptation changes is her marriage; here it’s an arranged one in her teens, rather than a misjudged infatuation that went sour, and her husband Onyinyechukwu (Sule Rimi) is a much more unpleasant character – less of a dull buffoon, more of a vicious opportunist. There’s also the opportunity to put the country’s civil war into the house in microcosm: Most of the characters are Igbo, the ethnic group dominant in the area who are trying to secede; the women’s sister-in-law Abosede (Ronkę Adékoluejo) is Yoruba, and as the Nigerian army defeats the Biafran one, so too does Abosede take over the household in her brutally destructive way, Adékoluejo’s gleeful portrayal getting a lot of the biggest audience gasps of the evening as the extent of her cruelty is exposed.

But the way in which the play feels most like its own beast is in the literal way the civil war appears; in Chekhov’s original the location remains a backwater throughout, the soldiers only hoping to see action when they leave it. Here the second and third acts see the village at the centre of the war, the disastrous third-act fire replaced by the effects of a bombing. It gives a different kind of urgency to the story and places the sisters in a more tangible danger; but even this can’t derail the ruts that Chekhov laid down for them in the end. The setting being post-colonial is increasingly relevant, as there’s much discussion of the way the departing empire setting down arbitrary border lines without regard for the history of the various peoples who live there always results in internal conflict. The adaptation loses some subtlety to the character of sole brother Dimgba (Tobi Bamtefa,) here another rather blunt obstacle to the sisters’ happiness, but it gains some in the oldest sister, Niles getting to give Lolo some fight and spirit rather than sleepwalking into a life as a permanently exhausted spinster and headmistress.

Nadia Fall’s production is dynamic, putting onstage a crucial scene involving Udo’s suitor Nmeri Ora (Peter Bankolé) that Chekhov kept firmly out of sight, and Katrina Lindsay’s designs have a richness and depth you don’t often see in this play, which in my experience has attracted a lot of minimalist staging. The fact that the house built by the siblings’ father slips further away upstage with every scene is symbolic without overplaying it. Three Sisters is a particularly bleak Chekhov that I always approach with some trepidation, and if anything Ellams’ version makes the despair even more tangible. He has managed to get the occasional lighter moment into the story, and even if there’s no chance of coming out of the experience uplifted it’s a powerful retelling with a distinct identity and new meaning. (Obligatory rant though: If you’re scheduling a show likely to go over the 3-hour mark, an earlier-than-usual start time wouldn’t hurt.)

Three Sisters by Inua Ellams after Chekhov is booking in repertory until the 19th of February at the National Theatre’s Lyttelton.

Running time: 3 hours 10 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: The Other Richard.