Word: masha
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...suitors who flock about the sisters are also well-played. John Bellucci masterfully plays Vershinin, the philosophizing soldier with whom Masha falls in love. Bellucci works his rich and versatile voice like a musical instrument, retaining extraordinary control of volume, diction and timing in long, technically taxing monologues. He meticulously defines his character by pacing constantly around the stage in repeated circles that parallel his sermons...
...lighting and the music immeasurably enhance the performance's emotional atmosphere, but the production escapes detachment and coldness chiefly because of uniformly excellent acting. Every actor crafts and sustains a character; even the bit parts are people with distinct--if annoying--personalities. Heitzi Epstein (Olga), Jenny Cornuelle (Masha) and Anne Clark (Irina) turn in carefully sustained and sensitive performances as the three sisters whose emotional foibles and frustrations are the play's heart. Clark as the youngest sister deftly moves from lighthearted young girl to pensive despairing woman. In one scene she darts across the stage, childishly reveling...
Cornuelle's spare acting aptly characterizes Masha, the bored middle sister tied to a pompous posturing schoolmaster husband. She rigidly controls her movements, gestures and voice, yet manages to convey Masha's emotional conflict, especially her moving confession of love for Vershinin...
Laboring under the burden of a broken toe, Bellucci nevertheless is eloquent and convincing, especially in the beautifully acted love scenes with Masha. Chris Clemenson takes the awkward character of Tusenbach and fills it out with sympathy and skill. Tusenbach's paeans to labor can easily turn into sermonizing and his devotion to Irina into sickening self-abasement, but Clemenson doesn't self-dramatize the role. He transcends the limiting qualities of the part as Chekhov wrote it to create to subtle portrait of human suffering, weltschmerz...
...Galina (Bettye Fitzpatrick), and she has more of the instincts of a den mother than a party official. Her chief worry is Katya (Cristine Rose), who spends most of the play catatonically desolated by the absence of her husband. Galina's chief ally in rallying group morale is Masha (Bella Jarrett), a gutsy fighter who can issue a pep talk that would blister a slacking football team...