DC 3

I believe you mentioned this article the other day--i wish i spoke
russian. it would be fascinating to see this production and get a sense of
what is lost/altered in translation. i also attached a couple pictures of
the production and a picture of the man himself.

British director Donnellan satisfies with 'Three Sisters' at Kennedy Center
By Peter Marks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 21, 2010; C01

"Moscow, Moscow, Moscoooow!" murmurs sick-at-heart Irina in the closing
minutes of Act 1 of director Declan Donnellan's gorgeously observed "Three
Sisters." It's the play's rallying cry, its articulation of eternal
restlessness, here uttered by actress Nelli Uvarova with a churning
anguish -- and a final "Moscow!" expressed as a sigh that gets caught
wrenchingly in her throat.

An American ear may not recognize many of the words spoken in this
splendid production, performed in Anton Chekhov's native tongue by a
superb Russian cast. But the heart surely connects with all the
meticulously realized feeling, the sense of the air being let out of
inflated hopes, in a household of declining fortunes in a
turn-of-the-20th-century Russian backwater.

Donnellan's "Three Sisters" -- with helpful English surtitles -- had its
North American premiere Tuesday night in a lamentably brief engagement in
the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater; the final Washington performance
of the touring production occurred Wednesday night. Unlike so many other
stagings of Chekhov, which can leave you with the impression that you've
passed through a reverent museum exhibit, this one exudes immediacy, the
idea that these neurotic, excitable people from another place and time
breathe the same oxygen as you.

The British director, whose creatively elastic company, Cheek by Jowl, has
produced this version in concert with the Chekhov International Theatre
Festival, enters into a deeply satisfying collaboration with his Slavic
ensemble. In the best interpretations, "Three Sisters" is an aching
experience, funny at times but also profoundly moving, as it becomes ever
clearer for the characters that the more passionately they seek, the less
they'll receive.

An audience feels for their resilience, their vows to commit themselves to
work, their refusals to give up. Donnellan's staging aids in our viewing
them in the clearest light. His set and costume designer, Nick Ormerod,
employs only the sparsest of visual elements: several large panels
depicting houses or trees; a stack of dining room chairs and assorted
small tables; a dollhouse-size model of a home, perhaps evoking the
family's country estate, or the sisters' memories of a happier childhood.
The play's intense personalities loom especially large in this landscape,
whether the portrait is of the spaniel-like devotedness of Masha's husband
Kulygin (Sergey Lanbamin) or the blossoming tyranny of Andrey's wife
Natasha (Ekaterina Sibiryakova).

At the nexus are the sisters, steady Olga (Evgenia Dmitrieva),
disconsolate Masha (Anna Khalilulina) and vibrant Irina. As they moan and
fuss and flutter, you're drawn into an authentic-seeming symbiosis: When
they dissolve in laughter on the floor together, giggling at the
impertinent airs put on by their country bumpkin of a sister-in-law, the
sensation is of three women falling into a familiar and comfortable
pattern. That their contempt in this moment is laced with a perceptible
dread -- Natasha is taking charge of the house in a way none of them is
able -- speaks to the degree of psychological specificity in which the
actresses invest their portrayals.

"Three Sisters" examines both a socioeconomic and metaphorical state of
being: idleness. The play unfolds over several years in the well-to-do
household of the sisters and their brother Andrey (Alexey Dadonov), in
which the question of what to do with one's time -- some characters have
jobs; others boast they've never held one -- seems to be as much a
philosophical issue as a practical one. What's changing is the erosion of
the youthful sense of life stretching in front of them forever. Andrey,
for instance, once thought of as professorial material, has settled for a
bureaucratic job in a small town off the beaten track.

In their orbit in this paralyzed domain are other psychically frozen
people, most notably the military doctor, Chebutykin (Igor Yasulovich), a
drunk so vacant he no longer empathizes with those in his care. Yasulovich
gives the best account I've ever heard of the disturbing speech in which
Chebutykin confesses to feeling nothing after the accidental death of a
patient. "If only I didn't exist," he declares -- not out of guilt, it
seems, so much as the abject meaninglessness of his life.

Donnellan's actors apply to scene after scene a crystalline clarity; you
can feel the excruciating pull of opposing instincts. Khalilulina's
exquisitely played Masha is a case in point. At last stealing an embrace
with the man she loves, the utopian romantic Vershinin (a terrific
Alexander Feklistov), she drops instantly, shockingly to the floor.
Lanbamin's simpering Kulygin is there to scoop her up, and her docility
suggests that she consigns herself to the unsatisfying dimensions of her
fate.

The cumulative emotional effect has its payoff in the last moments of the
play, in the sisters' strangely consoling faith that what they've gone
through has a purpose. "One day people will know the reason for all this
suffering," one of them says -- an affirmation that in this ensemble's
revelatory treatment proves heartbreaking.

Three Sisters

by Anton Chekhov. Directed by Declan Donnellan; lighting, Judith
Greenwood; music, Sergey Chekryzhov. With Andrey Kuzichev. Closed
Wednesday at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.