‘Three Sisters’ yearn for a better life, against the odds
How do we reconcile our youthful dreams of beauty and truth with what we become in a world of pragmatists and philistines? Chekhov continually asked the question; we’re nowhere near answering it.
Hence the ongoing power of “Three Sisters.” It’s Chekhov’s masterpiece; it’s also the most relevant of his plays to our own mean and post-literate age, in which the better world the sisters champion can seem as foreign as Chekhov himself. All the more reason to applaud the exquisite, just-opened American Players Theatre production of “Sisters,” under William Brown’s direction.
Initially ranging from ages 20 to 28 in a play spanning five years, newly orphaned sisters Irina (Rebecca Hurd), Masha (Kelsey Brennan) and Olga (Laura Rook) are cultured anomalies in the sort of provincial town Chekhov repeatedly reviled in his stories as backward, hard and dishonest.
Their idyllic oasis is relatively intact when we first meet them, during a spring picnic in which the world seems as young and hopeful as Hurd’s 20-year-old Irina. Downstage and staring at us with a big smile and faraway eyes, she envisions the family’s return to Moscow, the civilized beacon from whence they’d come when their now-deceased father was transferred.
Sheltered by the servants she barely notices – Brown continually makes sure that we do – the Irina of Act I can seem naïve.
But Hurd never lets us doubt that this youngest sister has a heart as pure as that of oldest sister Olga, embodied by Rook as the sensitive soul Olga remains, despite life’s disappointments. Irina will weather still greater disappointments with yet more resilience, as Hurd credibly traces the long dramatic arc of the character in this play who grows most.
That leaves middle sister Masha, angriest because she’s smartest and therefore least able to play pretend as her marriage and life crumble. Even when Masha’s frustration boils over and she turns nasty, Brennan’s brave and impassioned performance ensures we root for her, standing in for every woman trapped in a world she never made, with no place to go.
Brennan’s version of Moscow is Vershinin (a charismatic Chiké Johnson), commander of the troops garrisoned in town and quixotic seeker – in a play filled with them, each one given texture by Brown’s excellent ensemble – for the meaning of existence.
Vershinin insists that every town needs “intelligent, cultivated people.” Is he right?
Having married the sisters’ spineless brother – somehow, the handsome and strapping Nate Burger successfully channels this disheveled hulk of a man – it’s the coarse and cruel Natasha (Eliza Stoughton) who morphs from barbarian at the gate to keeper of the keys.
Natasha doesn’t read and isn’t curious; despite all her narcissistic blather about her kids, she has nothing to say.
She’s so 2017. But she wouldn’t be caught dead watching a Chekhov play. “Three Sisters” continues through Sept. 23 at APT’s Hill