Three Sisters at The Estates Theatre

Three sisters. Olga, Masha and Irina. The eldest is a teacher at a high school; the middle sister is unhappily married to the teacher Kulygin; the youngest strives to find the sense of life and longs for true love. Yet what the three Prozorova sisters yearn for most is to return to Moscow, a city they remember from their childhood as the only place where one can be happy. Moscow – so magnificent! So exciting! So ... different! Olga, Masha and Irina perseveringly long for happiness, which they fail to experience in their lives. And hence they have hopes for the future, pine for the past, while they remain insusceptible to the signs of the present. They deem the present merely a period of transition, a time of exile.
Three sisters. Three tragicomic fates. Recollection of the old times and the feeling that life can only be lived to the full elsewhere. Is it indeed the case? Therefore – to stay? Or to leave? To leave the native town, escape the drudgery of work, a dysfunctional relationship?
Three sisters. And three identical questions: To stay or to leave?

Authors

• Jerome Kern
• Oscar Hammerstein II