Word: kulygin
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...director, Heather Cross deftly exploits the comedic as well as the tragic aspects of Chekhov's script. Fyodor Ilich Kulygin (Glenn Kessler) begins each of his scenes by asking for the whereabouts of his wife, Masha (Patricia Goldman). This habit, funny at first, becomes tragic as Kessler is revealed to be a man hopelessly trying to deny the grim reality of his loveless marriage. The alienation of the characters in The Three Sisters becomes so forceful at the production's conclusion precisely because it appears so harmlessly amusing in the play's opening scenes...
Happily, the occasionally indelicate symbolism cannot ruin Jean-Claude van Itallie's sensitive, arresting new translation. He has dispensed with the halting speech patterns common to translations of Russian works, and has given the characters modern idiosyncrasies and sympathies. Masha's idiotic husband, Kulygin (Richard Grusin), says bumblingly to anyone who says a kind word about his wife. "Yes, of course, you're absolutely right. I love her very much, Masha. She's very nice." Masha calls her hated sister-in-law a "petit bourgeois bitch...
Nancy Cox (Olga), Susan Yakutis (Masha), Martin Andrucki (Vershinin), Deborah Holzel (Natasha), Daniel Seltzer (Doctor), Paul Shutt (Kulygin), and practically everyone else-all let their souls pour over the auditorium from time to time if not all the time. Lori Heineman as Irina and Andre Bishop as Andrei go even further than that, opening themselves up to let us see their entire nervous systems almost every second they are on stage. No matter how self-enclosed you are upon arrival at the Loeb during the next two weeks, you simply will not be able to pass up Heineman and Bishop...
Joseph Maher is acceptable as Masha's doting husband Kulygin, a pathetic and essentially brainless schoolteacher who likes to go around spouting worn-out Latin slogans. We must forgive him, for he knows not what he does to Masha...
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