Review: Three Sisters at MMNT

Although the costuming is appropriate, we found Masha to be overly frumpy, lacking the regal essence of an upper-class Muscovite. Instead, her costume attempted to represent her mood, but Dorothy Anne Bond is so brilliant in her performance that there was no need for a costume to do the work for her. The antithesis of a well dressed lady with an un-lady-like temper would have been far more interesting.

As in many productions, Natasha—a local girl and love interest to the sisters' brother Andrey—is portrayed as a silly, poorly dressed, country bumpkin who uses sex to get what she wants. Played by Lauren Hayes, she was both dressed and performed very one dimensionally, with the actress running through her lines too fast to become them, neglecting the complexity and intelligence of the only real dark heroine and victor of the play.

Olga, played by Julia Trinidad in a high, sing-songy voice that resembled the good witch in The Wizard of Oz, also lacked depth of character; the actress ran her lines with no emotion or beats, as if knowing them was all it took. Austin D. Alexander’s Andrey was admirable, taking the appropriate pregnant pauses before delivering his lines—in true Stanislavski fashion, becoming his character so much that one could see him struggle with the thoughts that produced what eventually came out of his mouth. The rest of the cast delivered their roles magnificently, living them versus acting them. The director’s vision for this entertaining version of Three Sisters should be praised.

Despite the reputation it has for being long and dreary, Three Sisters is a very funny play, as Chekhov intended it to be. This satire of upper-class, big-city Russians, struggling to romanticize the essence of work in their countryside manor and failing miserably after realizing work is really not at all romantic—just boring and hard—eventually comes full circle, with opening lines repeating, showing us that no one has really gotten anywhere. The characters are experts at moping, drinking, longing, committing adultery, partying, dueling...all desperate attempts to escape reality. The only exception is Natasha who plants herself as a green weed in a gray household, slowly choking the life out of its inhabitants and becoming the ultimate victor and emblem of life.