Chekhov by candlelight. It’s every bit as lovely as it sounds. And Caroline Steinbeis’s delicately phrased chamber production of Three Sisters fits so snugly into the diminutive Sam Wanamaker Playhouse that you wonder why the great Russian writer hasn’t been staged here before.
But here he is, and here are his scatty, troubled characters muddling through in an entirely recognisable way: Olga, Masha and Irina, three intelligent, educated sisters marooned in a provincial backwater and longing for Moscow; the regiment of soldiers who pass through their lives. They may wear period costume — military dress uniform for the men; Edwardian-era skirts and tight waistlines for the women — but their crippling combination of acute awareness and cloying impotence feels entirely familiar. The shining optimism of soldier-philosopher Vershinin, that future generations will have sorted everything out, draws a hollow laugh from the audience.
Time stalks Chekhov’s plays like an invisible character, tormenting people with dreams of the past or the future and making a mockery of their plans. Three Sisters opens with a reference to time — “It’s a year since father died,” says sweet Irina to her older sisters — and ends with those same siblings clustered together facing a reduced future. Few on stage feel at home in the present. The spinning top, gifted to Irina on her name day, becomes an eloquent symbol of the characters’ condition.
All of this comes springing out of Rory Mullarkey’s crisply contemporary new translation, which rolls off the tongue without being ostentatiously modern, keeping the play fresh and funny despite the period setting. An excellent ensemble brings subtle definition to the characters, which works wonderfully well in this intimate space. Michelle Terry’s exhausted teacher, Olga, holds herself so stiffly it’s as if she were trying to hold yearning at bay through the sheer force of deportment. Only her unexpected confession that she would marry anyone who asked gives us a window into her loneliness. Shannon Tarbet’s Masha, head-to-toe in black, shimmers with desperation, and collapses in an agonised howl at the end as she sees Vershinin, to whom she has pinned her hopes of happiness, march out of her life. Ruby Thompson deftly scopes Irina’s journey from hope to weary stoicism in four short years.
There are exquisitely detailed performances across the whole cast. Stuart Thompson’s Andrei, the sisters’ brother — once hopeful of being a professor — dwindles into a sullen councillor, whose brash wife (Natalie Klamar) is openly cheating on him. Ishia Bennison brings great poignancy to the old nanny, Anfisa. Paul Ready, as Vershinin, glows with energy — easy to see why Masha falls for him — but catches too the self-importance of the character. His restless search for meaning butts up against the resigned nihilism of Peter Wight’s ageing doctor, who could have wandered straight out of a Beckett play.
It’s a production that skilfully draws out the play’s combination of wit, absurdity and humanity. Oli Townsend’s minimal design sketches in the backdrop — embossed birches on the back wall; a garden swing in the final act that, like the spinning top, quietly emphasises the play’s themes — while Anna Watson’s candlelit design adroitly shapes the mood. Perhaps Chekhov could visit more frequently.
★★★★☆
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