Review: THREE SISTERS, Vaudeville Theatre

Somewhere in the Russian countryside, three sisters - Olga, Masha and Irina - are waiting for their youth to end. They are deeply, tragically over-cultured and overqualified for their surroundings: fluent in foreign languages and proficient in philosophy, yet hundreds of miles from the nearest city. With nothing to do but chat to the locally stationed soldiers, the girls dream of life in Moscow. "Soon," they promise each other, they'll get there.

I don't need to tell you that the three sisters never go to Moscow, or that Three Sisters is a challenging play, full of disappointment and compromise. The Maly Theatre of St. Petersburg, under the direction of stage veteran Lev Dodin, have brought their especially stoic rendition of Chekhov's masterpiece to the Vaudeville Theatre on the West End for a limited engagement.

Performed in the original Russian with English surtitles, the Maly's Three Sisters is a play that will push you to think about what you really want in life, and if you can make do with what you really have.

Alexander Borovsky's set evokes emptiness and monotony, a sense that when you're not where you want to be, you're nowhere. He takes no enchantment in the Russian countryside, nor the "broad, splendid river" that runs through the girls' vast property. It is a set as if imagined by the sisters themselves - empty of colour, empty of beauty, empty of life.

There are no small actors in Dodin's exquisite cast, who have been performing Three Sisters for years now, and play off each other seamlessly. I must admit I was especially drawn in by Ksenia Rappoport as Masha, the middle sister, whose diminishing sense of whimsy, like a candle burning down, fades as the show progresses, and Oleg Ryzantsev as Lieutenant Tuzenbach, desperate but not without his dignity.

The bleakness of the Maly's Three Sisters isn't for everyone. In the first act, I saw a couple of young theatre-goers shift nervously in their seats as they realised they weren't watching a play about a road trip to Moscow. So full of hope themselves, they might have seen in the story's unraveling something they didn't want to confront. (They left at interval.)

When I spoke to actor Sergey Kuryshev about Three Sisters back in May, he stressed that the play doesn't aim for hopelessness: "I think the great theme in Three Sisters is that you have to think about how you're living your life, and what you're living your life for. And by examining that, you hopefully get more strength to carry on."

Hopefully.

Three Sisters at the Vaudeville Theatre 19-29 June

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