On this day, Andrei proposes to his local girlfriend Natasha whom none of his sisters can stand due to her awkwardness and social climbing.
On this occasion, the new battery commander, Colonel Vershinin, arrives to introduce himself, having known them as children in Moscow, and he and Masha develop a ill-starred passion for each other, both being married to others. Oldest sister Olga teaches at the local high school, and middle sister Masha is bored by her marriage to Kulygin, a rather academic and dull Latin teacher. The first scene takes place on the occasion of the 20 th birthday of the youngest sister Irina who has two suitors with whom she is not in love, both soldiers in the battalion that is stationed in town. The Prozorovs moved to this provincial town 11 years ago from Moscow and their dearest wish is to return to the capital where life is more interesting. The play begins one year after the death of General Prozorov, the father of sisters Olga, Masha and Irina and brother Andrei.
Staged as part of Blueprint Productions’ Chekhov + Turgenev mini-festival, performed in repertory with About Love, Pomerantz’s retitled adaptation of Turgenev’s novella First Love, the two productions use three of the same actors and live musical scores by composer Nancy Harrow, a longtime collaborator of Pomerantz.Īmanda Kristin Nichols as Masha and Nehal Joshi as Colonel Vershinin in a scene from Will Pomerantz’s adaptation of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” at The Sheen Center (Photo credit: Russ Rowland) He has also broken up the acts into shorter scenes which will bother purists but makes the play easier to digest.
Pomerantz has somewhat streamlined the play by eliminating three minor characters and assigning their lines to others. The new adaptation is lucid, straightforward and accessible making this a fine introduction to Chekhov’s play for those who do not know it as well as an excellent ensemble production for those that do. Chekhov who began his career as a country doctor was a master at revealing the depths of the human soul. It is the sort of play in which nothing much happens yet life goes on and everything happens: marriages, love affairs, births, deaths, anniversaries, birthdays and tragedies. However, director Will Pomerantz’s new adaptation makes it as lively and light as it can possibly be given that it is about middle-class characters in Russia at the turn-of-the-last century who are beset by demoralizing disappointments and long held hopes and aspirations that fail to come about.
While Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters is sometimes thought of as a comedy, there is no way to keep it from seeming heavy due to its tragicomic overtones.
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