THREE SISTERS TWO: Reza De Wet, Orange Tree, till 20 April

THREE SISTERS TWO: Reza De Wet
Orange Tree: Tkts 020 8940 3633

Runs: 2h 35m, one interval, in repertory with Chekhov's Three Sisters till April 20
Review: Vera Lustig: 27 February

Compulsively watchable, if sometimes a shade too clever, 20-years-on sequel to Chekhov's THE THREE SISTERS. Some of De Wet's characterisations are sketchy, but the production does the play proud.THREE SISTERS TWO forms an ironic symmetry with Chekhov's play: Moscow, unbearably seductive in 1900, has become a place of terror. Stagnation has given way to civil war; chafing frustration has hardened into scarred numbness, mild discontent into rancour: Andrey (a bloated, splenetic Colin Hurley) talks of watching his wife eat, 'the fat dripping down her three chins'.

De Wet's melancholic, tetchy dialogue echoes the master's, with a pungency well suited to the later, turbulent period. She makes sly, nudging references to the Russian's other plays. In true Chekhovian style, the house fills with people and then empties.

Like THE TREE SISTERS, it opens with a protracted exposition, thinly disguised as reminiscence. But the scene is suffused with sunlight and lyrical wistfulness, the mood in the decaying Prozorov home in summer 1920 is of fly-swatting irascibility. Interestingly, though, there is no tension between Red and White Russian characters.

The house is home to Andrey, his meddling wife and their implausibly well-adjusted daughter Sofja (a luminous Octavia Walters). The two unmarried sisters are still at home: febrile Irina (an affecting, but too pretty Kim Thomson) and crabbed Olga, martyr to headaches and severe myopia (Anna Carteret, doing her formidable best with a two-dimensional role). The genteel Prozorovs now share their house with neighbours from hell.

A visit from Masha precipitates a crisis and reignites old loves and hatreds. She is briefly reunited with the chastened Vershinin (Jeffry Wickham in magnificently subtle form: proud, stoical, yet passionate). Belinda Lang, brittly slender in modish red, is outstanding. A spoilt beauty, she oscillates between vanity and self-loathing, emotions flickering across her face. She's an outsider to her family, and, like Vershinin, has weathered seismic political and personal unrest. Mash brings the revolution home; her perfume barely masks the whiff of gunpowder.

Cast:
Olga: Anna Carteret
Mash: Belinda Lang
Irina: Kim Thomson
Andrey: Colin Hurley
Natasha: Maggie Wells
Sofja: Octavia Walters
Vershinin: Jeffry Wickham
Igor: Timothy Watson
Anfisa: Helen Blatch

Director: Auriol Smith
Design: Margarete Forsyth
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Sound: Sam Akester

2002-03-12 22:34:14