THREE SISTERS. To 19 May.
London
THREE SISTERS
by Anton Chekhov
Barbican Theatre To 19 June 2007
Wed-Sat 7.15pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Runs 3hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 0845 120 7511
www.barbican.org.uk/bite (reduced booking fee online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 May
A bold, perceptive, fresh production.
No sooner have the Prozorov family grouped centre-stage near the audience (very near on the re-formed, open-stage Barbican) than it’s clear director Declan Donnellan is handling Chekhov with insight but no preconceptions.
This is a bold, richly detailed production. Schoolteacher Olga’s opening comments about tiredness have the detchment of someone still young. By the end, hands behind her back as if patrolling a classroom, using the over-emphatic facial expressions of someone encouraging a child, she’s institutionalised by the job.
Irina’s moody from the start; this post-office assistant taps her feet telegraphically, while there’s contrasting anger and hope in her midpoint invocation of Moscow. The youngest sister, fed-up being called variations on charming, she’s particularly harsh on her admirers, from her eventual husband to her mother’s old admirer Chebutykin.
Colonel Vershinin, for whom middle-sister Masha falls, is no mature matinee idol, but furrowed and balding. She is, as so often here, engrossed in a book when he appears. By the end, they part in an impulsive clinch, her demonstrative husband Kulygin wilfully ignoring her anguish as he grasps her prone, agonised body. His false beard has never seemed such a desperate effort to cheer her up.
Nick Ormerod’s design has two segments of a house exterior alongside white chairs and tables, sometimes assembled as a stage (a doll’s house, ending on its side, seems overly-symbolic). There’s a strong sense of presentation, Vershinin and Tuzenbach (less successfully) making their philosophical speeches from a hastily-assembled stage, candles doing for footlights. The maskers Natasha forbids would have played to two rows of seats, and the sisters several times face the audience; Olga’s final call reaches out to the public.
This self-consciousness adds enriching irony, seen also in Tuzenbach’s mock-death, from which he rises laughing even more than normal. And it contrasts Natasha, who uses playacting without irony in her manipulative use of concern for her children to get her own way.
There’s a constant sense of energy with characters forever moving; marching, running or dancing. Intimate moments are played across the stage, the space successfully creating a sense of passion. This is an unmissable production.
Andrey: Alexei Dadonov
Natalia: Ekaterina Sibiryakova
Olga: Evgenia Dmitrieva
Masha: Irina Grineva
Irina: Nelly Uvarova
Kulygin: Vitaly Egorov/Sergey Lanbamin
Vershinin: Alexander Feklistov
Tuzenbakh: Andrej Kuzichev/Artem Semakin
Solenyi: Andrey Merzlikin/Evgeny Pisarev
Chebutykin: Mikhail Zhigalov/Igor Yasulovich
Fedotik: Yury Makeev
Rode: Mikhail Dementiev
Ferapont: Igor Yasulovich/Mikhail Zhigalov
Anfisa: Galina Moracheva
Director: Declan Donnellan
Designer: Nick Ormerod
Lighting: Judith Greenwood
Music: Sergey Chekrychov
Movement: Ramune Khodorkaite
Voice: Aida Khorosheva
Assistant director: Evgeny Pisarev
2007-05-17 17:00:24