Theatre review: Three Sisters

Last winter season saw the Swanamaker take a successful first crack at Ibsen; this year, and in the annual onstage appearance by the Artistic Director, Shakespeare's Globe adds Chekhov to the repertory. In a remote part of Russia the titular Three Sisters live in the house their father bought when he was appointed commander of the resident military garrison. A year after his death, his children are still there, talking about moving back to Moscow but tied to the area by a few circumstances. Over the next five years, instead of freeing themselves from them, they'll end up with ever more reasons they can't escape the depressing small town they only ever thought was a stopgap. Olga is the eldest, the schoolteacher who has little love for the job and certainly doesn't see it as a career she'll progress in.

But as played by Michelle Terry she's a brisk, stern and pragmatic figure, one of those primary school teachers who can never turn off the teacher voice regardless of who she's talking to. Everyone else sees her inevitably ending up as a spinster headmistress, even if she doesn't.

Her younger sisters are the romantics: Masha (Shannon Tarbet) married when she was young and impressionable; only when it was too late did she realise her husband Kulygin (Keir Charles) is terminally dull. When new commander Vershinin (Paul Ready) arrives, they begin an affair. Finally Irina (Ruby Thompson) romanticises the lives of working people; but when she actually needs to get a day job she finally understands that while some work may genuinely add purpose to life, other jobs can feel pointless and soul-destroying.

So Three Sisters is a particularly bleak Chekhov, which means the most obvious thing that stands out about Rory Mullarkey's translation and Caroline Steinbeis' production is how many laughs there are. The play tracks its characters from celebration in the first act to sad farewells in the last, and here we actually see some of that joy and celebration from the start. A lot of social awkwardness as well as the fact that the few soldiers who keep coming back do so because they genuinely enjoy the company, means we start on an actual level of joy. And even as that drains away from the characters, the way we've got to know them and their unspoken interactions means some of that lightness can appear even in the darkest scenes.

On the flipside, the other notable thing about Steinbeis' production is the way characters' failings are slowly but starkly laid bare with each act. The sisters' sole brother Andrei (Stuart Thompson) appears weak from the start, but just how catastrophically weak becomes apparent as he falls into a gambling addiction, loses the family fortune and is manipulated by the character who most openly sabotages the sisters' lives: His proto-Thatcherite wife Natalya (Natalie Klamar) plays the provincial fool but once lady of the house treats the servants as disposable, openly carries out an affair and screws everyone else over in favour of herself and her children (who, I'm not sure is ever openly acknowledged, seem incredibly unlikely to be Andrei's.)

Charles' Kulygin displays a little more backbone than we tend to see from the character - he clearly knows his wife is cheating on him and has some anger about it, but tries to keep everyone's spirits up because there's already enough going on, making him more sympathetic than the usual fool. Particularly interesting to me because this character is one I sometimes forget is there is the development of Solyony (Richard Pyros,) the soldier nobody seems to want hanging around, who starts out as little more than a troll, playing awkward jokes that nobody enjoys, and becomes increasingly darker as he's revealed to be a sexual predator and killer.

Around the time I started this blog Chekhov seemed to be stuck in a rut of very traditional, unimaginative productions, something that's been very much upended in the time since with a lot of more modern, reinvented or abstract takes. So there's been plenty of breathing space for a return to a classic look and Oli Townsend's period design, all faded gilt, takes us right back to 1901 when the play premiered. The Swanamaker's candelight is used to good effect to take us through its moods: Opening bright for the party, the candles are increasingly snuffed out in the second and third acts. Using one of the venue's cheats on the all-candlelight rule that I quite like, the final act's early morning has no candles, just artificial daylight coming in from the doors and windows for a bright but starkly cold final act.

There are a couple more elements in the adaptation I found interesting, and that perhaps join the comic moments to make this a slightly more positive take on the play: Generally Irina agreeing to a loveless marriage with Baron Tuzenbach seems like a financial move, but here his money is downplayed and it almost becomes an empowering move for her. She likes him even if she doesn't love him (although for all everyone protests to the contrary, Michael Abubakar is way too charming not to make him seem like the catch of the battalion,) and for once this is her making a choice about her life rather than allowing herself to be carried along by fate. Of course the way this pans out leaves us with a different kind of heartbreak.

Finally, the play has a refrain of people imagining that in a hundred years' time people will have finally sorted things out and be happy. Any production this century has of course had the added grim irony of the audience knowing exactly how well that hope panned out, so in a small but important change Mullarkey has made that "two hundred, three hundred years," leaving a 2025 audience with at least a tiny hope that the characters' hope might be right. Certainly an interesting production that keeps the play's devastating elements while offering some glimmers of light you don't always get.

Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov in a version by Rory Mullarkey is booking in repertory until the 19th of April at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.