Simon Haworth

Three Sisters, The Royal Exchange

Three Sisters, as with so many works of the Russian literary canon, is so interminably long and inwardly orientated that it’s difficult not to feel that Chekhov’s intention in writing the play was to create some kind of elaborate, theatre based practical joke. 

 

The Royal Exchange’s new production, employing Michael Frayn’s excellent translation, always had on hand an English equivalent for those little idiosyncrasies in the Russian language, meaning the dialogue was always fresh, if not the stage-play. The cast grew into the production, although some scenes at the beginning seemed to fall flat. But once all were firmly embedded in exile on the Prozorov’s nameless estate the audience’s attention was rewarded.

 

Three Sisters

Three Sisters

 

Lucy Black and Emma Cunniffe as Olga and Masha respectively, remained imperturbed while the vortex at whose centre they struggle began to swirl. Irina, (Beth Cooke), slowly spiralled into the same place despite initial innocence and youthful vigour. Laurence Mitchell was convincing as the shifty, unpredictable and at times malevolent Solyony.

 

Tim Barlow, displaying an intuitive sense of comic timing, in the small role of Ferapont, and Joseph Kloska playing Andrey, were both excellent. When onstage together they expertly grasped the nuances of the absurd comedy in their exchanges, Andrey’s increasing frustrations at the various failings in his personal and professional life are taken out on the old man, in who he perhaps sees some warped reflection of his own future.

 

Despite his character’s arrogance, Kloska’s portrayal was psychologically astute and sympathetic; the aspirational young scholar we meet at the start is slowly eroded by a gambling addiction and the sterile marriage to his unfaithful wife Natasha, played by Polly Findlay with formidable spite and suitable self absorption. Her assertion in Act 1 that: “I’m so unused to being in the big world”, is by the end, with Andrey visibly paler, greatly agitated, and sporting a particularly smart pair of Chelsea boots, more a gleeful admission of guilt than statement of recompense.

 

Indeed, Three Sisters is a play in which perhaps all the characters are inadequately equipped to deal with the wide world, and instead consciously choose to languish deludedly within the protective confines of this Russian backwater, indulging in the turn-of-the-century pre-cursor to the modern group therapy session. Lacking any real outcome and despite odd flashes of optimism, particularly from Chris Colquhoun’s sprightly Baron Tusenbach, their world is really a microcosm of uncertainty and trepidation.

 

If this is to be the case, then Michael Elwyn as Chebutykin is the production’s despairing, sardonic heart, and incurable nihilist, declaring in Act 3: “God damn the whole lot of them. God damn them. They thought, because I am a doctor, I can therefore treat all ailments, but I know absolutely nothing, I have forgotten everything which I know, and I don’t remember a thing, not a single thing…If only I was non-existent!”. Doing so he expresses in one alcohol-fuelled soliloquy of single-minded existential woe perhaps Three Sisters’ central dilemma: how exactly are we to spend our lives?

 

Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov

 

The final scenes, played out within a cluster of silver birches complete with symbolic showers of falling autumn leaves were well executed, poignant, and the highlight in terms of the otherwise disappointing set design, (compounded by plasticy imitation columns and ill-placed, audience-hampering drapes). Olga’s final line: “If only we could know!” clearly resonated as the anxieties stirred by emotional and physical distance were provoked, along with the bittersweet nature of arrivals and departures, hope and despair, on which this play essentially rests.

 

Three Sisters at The Royal Exchange is hardly groundbreaking theatre, but it doesn’t aspire to this condition. It is a vivid production of great honesty, which at times sparkles and stays true to Chekhov’s classical sensibilities, the notion that, as Michael Frayn puts it in his programme notes: “the drama is within Chekhov exactly as it is within all of us”.

 

By Simon Haworth

 

Three Sisters runs at The Royal Exchange until 11 October

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