Word: masha
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Usually directors perceive the play as a tale of claustropohobia, of slow stifling, of atrophy. The three sisters, Masha, Olga, and Irina want to join the whirl and bustle of life in Moscow, but instead they remain in their small town, their hopes and expectations gradually shrinking to fit the confines of their humdrum existence. Directors typically use elaborate, crowded Victorian set designs to suggest the cramped nature of life in the Prozorov household...
...another such scene, Masha (Cheryl Giannini) recites her lines blankly to the tuneless hum of a spinning top. A third vignette shows Natasha sitting among a clutter of her child's toys: Building blocks, a tiny chair, a wooden dog on a string are silhouetted brokenly against the floor...
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...
...company, as usual, acquits itself competently. No single actor steals the show or dazzles with thespian brilliance, but all-perform convincingly. Karen MacDonald as Natasha is appropriately flamboyant and flouncing. Cheryl Giannini manages very well the tenuous connection between Masha's existential misery and her womanly love for Lieutenant Coloral Vershinin (Alvin Epstein...
...warm and comfortable room, and slowly settles onto a couch, elevating his legs to minimize the effects of phlebitis. A portrait of a pretty dark-haired woman hangs on one wall; that is Joan Plowright, his third wife and companion of 21 years, painted when she was playing Masha in Chekhov's The Three Sisters, which Olivier directed. Next to one of the windows is a huge picture of a young man dressed in Romeo's tights. He is impossibly handsome, with a long-lashed, almost feminine beauty. More striking still is the look in his eye: assured...