The Three Sisters

I recently went to a reading of this play by a theatre group here in Philadelphia that I really enjoy. Although I could write a very positive review of their reading, I'll try and focus on the writing itself. This play presents a masterful peek into societal life for three sisters living in a relatively small Russian city of 100,000 people. The theme of living in your memories or living in your hopes is a major theme that is magnificently played out across the play's long four acts. Each of the main characters has a catch phrase or speech that they deliver a variant of in each act, the first time full of hope and happiness and with each passing act with more and more despair and hopelessness. The three sister's arcs into unhappiness and depression weave together to create a very cohesive whole. I thought the contrast between the three sisters and their one brother played perfectly into the development of the sisters' characters. In fact, the contrast between the male characters and the female characters was very interesting all around. The transformation of Natasha's character was also an interesting shift. I found the character of Solyony to be one of the only male characters that compared to the three sisters, but I can't put my finger on why. Watching the town fall apart through the lives of the sisters made for a great play. If you can stand some slow plot development and lengthy dialog (ie, it is a Russian story), you should really check this play out!

The 'Three Sisters' is another Chekhov depiction of life's pains, disappointments, hopes , illusions and moments of beauty. It is once again as in the 'Seagull' life in the provinces which is a central villain depriving the heroines of what they believe would be a fuller more realized life in the city. Each one of the sisters does not come to the Love and realization in life that they dreamed. Olga the schoolteacher ends up as the mistress of her school, but this is not her heart's desire. Masha longs for a richer kind of love with one wiser than the husband she has outgrown .Irina dreams of an escape she can never make. Their brother Andrei who marries the peasant woman Natalya and has two children with her , sees her take over his life and drive out the sisters from the ancestral home. The characters as is usually the case with Chekhov are not one- dimensional but are complex mixtures .Though the play ends in the seeming failure of all , a speech of sister Olga suggests that 'hopelessness' is not the last word for Chekhov, but dream and delusion maintain us to the end. "We shall be forgotten, our faces will be forgotten, our voices, and how many there were of us; but our sufferings will pass into joy for those who will live after us, happiness and peace will be established upon earth, and they will remember kindly and bless those who have lived before. Oh, dear sisters, our life is not ended yet. We shall live! The music is so happy, so joyful, and it seems as though in a little while we shall know what we are living for, why we are suffering... If we only knew--if we only knew!"

Checkov was a master of composing life's largest problems into beautiful language and ordinary situations which the entire world could understand. Granted he wrote them a long time ago but the underlying situation exists everywhere today. Here are three sisters completely unable to move on with their lives. They are unhappy, they are desperate for a change of scene, they are forced to give up anyone they love to someone else but yet they remain glued to the exact place where all of this occurs. Olga has passed her prime, Masha loves someone other than her husband, and Irina has no idea what could possibly make her happy and all they do is talk about change, but never do anything active. And in the end it all comes full circle and we as an audience, a reader, need to decide how to not fall into such a life rut, to learn by their actions as we do from Aesop's fables. This play is just written a great deal better, with a little more comedy and tugging at the heartstrings.