Word: masha
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...series of love triangles. The young writer Constantine Treplev is hopelessly in love with the young and beautiful would-be actress Nina Zarechny. But Nina--the Seagull--is infatuated with Boris Trigorin, the famous novelist and lover of the actress Irina Arkadina. Constantine's mother. At the same time, Masha, the daughter of the estate manager, is deeply and futilely in love with Constantine, though she herself is loved by the local schoolteacher. As these characters work out their separate fates, the play explores the relationship of men and women and the role of the artist in modern society...
...raucous comedy that Chekhov always insisted it was and hurtles exuberantly toward a triumph of optimism over experience. Among a solid cast, including Jeremy Geidt as the pathetic Chebutykin, three performers achieve fresh insight: Alvin Epstein as a hyperkinetic but somewhat dim Vershinin; Cheryl Giannini as a hard, petulant Masha; and Karen MacDonald as a vulgar, manipulative yet curiously sympathetic Natasha, the sister-in-law who drives the three sisters from their family home...
...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...