Word: chekov
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Sometimes, though not often, a play comes along and says, "This is the way you who watch this play are, this is the way you live, and these are the things you suffer." If it says so well and beautifully, it is a great play. Anton Chekov's The Three Sisters is surpassingly great...
...only suggests something of the beauty of this play, and not very often at that. There are no villains who must accept the blame for the lack of unqualified success. With two or three exceptions, the general level of competence and experience is just not high enough to do Chekov's work justice. But the production is not total failure, either, because two of the performers--Barbara Blanchard and Thomas Teal--are good enough to support it while they are on stage...
...between a choke of four and five shows one weekend and none the next, forcing an alternate glut and fast on theatergoers. As good a production as the freshman Twelfth Night never made it out of the red because of the overwhelming competition of Gilbert and Sullivan, Sartre and Chekov. Some kind of organization, or regulation of drama at Harvard is necessary to make the "drama renaissance" more a flowering and less a mushrooming...
...violence, poverty, and antiquity. Professors find something to teach in another university. In a pinch, they can cross the United States, from East to West--according to that law which demands that one "Go to San Francisco," which is the liet-motiv of American dreams, like the Moscow of Chekov's Three Sisters,--while westerners can think only of the East...
...Chekov play, however, director Michael Harwood must take a good deal of the responsibility for a comparative failure. In trying to show the demented quality of the goings-on in a Russian bank near the turn of the century, Harwood subjects his actors to a break-neck pace that is much more frantic than funny. Martin Mintz, as a clerk, and John Fenn, as the bank manager, do get some laughs, but they constantly give the impression of trying too hard, with too little material. Yet the defects of the curtain-raiser matter very little, since the over-all quality...