Word: chekhovs
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...company are enormous. All of the actors have to work together to make the non sequiturs of the conversation revealing, and if the conversations aren't clear the characters lose their completeness. Director Boris Tumarin's production emphasizes the gross traits of each character. As a result, Chekhov's caricature (a relatively minor element in Three Sisters, his most expressly serious work) begins to cover up the more humane and characteristic features of the characters...
...thought, and while the bored yet quietly tense atmosphere of the play is vital it cannot be achieved at the expense of the characters. Tumarin's moody scenes with candlelight make surprisingly effective drama--but ultimately this Three Sisters is a Russian-flavored succotash of simple people, not a Chekhov play...
Some of the problems with the production are pointed up by the American Film Theatre's most recent production, a film of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre production of Three Sisters. None of Olivier's actors play characters without appeal. Chekhov's writing, expressed in a fine performance, makes us sensitive to evervone...
...great plays come across well even in a mediocre production. Chekhov never does. Tumarin's City Center production is funny--too funny--but it's good anyway. It can't measure up to the National Theatre's amazing acting, but that's, after all, only a movie of a play, and marred by some jazzed-up silent dream sequences, at that. The parallel monologues of a large number of characters demand a stage: filmed Chekhov never seems to find the right tone...
...kept warm by his desire for Isabel. As a sort of stupid, bemedalled shopkeeper, Angelo is too unimaginative to notice his own humanity until it firms up and pricks him, like reality pricking through a sentimental ideal. Like Gay, Shakespeare could sometimes take pleasure in this sort of moment. Chekhov was kinder, and accepted things more quietly--but none of the three playwrights questioned that reality will surface, every time...