The Three Sisters Review

The three sisters themselves: Masha (Natalia Payne), Irina (Heather Wood) and Olga (Wendy Rich Stetson) in Sarah Ruhl's "new version" of Chekhov's The Three Sisters at the Yale Repertory Theatre through October 8. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Three Sisters
By Anton Chekhov. A new version by Sarah Ruhl. Based on a literal translation by Elise Thoron with Natalya Paramonova and Kristin Johnsen-Neshati. Directed by Les Waters Scenic Designer: Annie Smart. Costume Designer: Ilona Somogyi. Lighting Designer: David Budries. Dramaturg: Rachel Steinberg. Stage Manager: James Mountcastle. Performed by Natalia Payne (Masha), Wendy Rich Stetson (Olga), and Heather Wood (Irina) play the title roles. The cast also includes Josiah Bania (Rode), James Carpenter (Chebutykin), Richard Farrell (Ferapont), Emily Kitchens (Natasha), Bruce McKenzie (Vershinin), Alex Moggridge (Andrei), Barbara Oliver (Anfisa), Keith Reddin (Kulygin), Thomas Jay Ryan (Tuzenbach), Brian Wiles (Fedotik), and Sam Breslin Wright (Solyony).
Through Oct. 8 at the Yale Repertory Theatre.

When is a translation not a translation? When it’s a hot playwright doing it; then it’s a “new version.”
It’s not that Sarah Ruhl doesn’t have strong feelings about how today’s theater should access the classics. Her post-feminist adaptation of the Eurydice myth retains the conceit of a Greek chorus, and provides empowering moments for its heroine in most unlikely places. Her version of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando is robust and alive, a transgender parable made to be staged live. Her Passion Plays uses a sacred theater format, and religious and political iconography, to dramatize mortal, earthbound struggles of today.
Call Three Sisters the exception to the Ruhl. It respects the form, intent, voice, period, style and rhythm of the original.
Instead of “Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, A New Version by Sarah Ruhl,” the credit could read “Sarah Ruhl Presents Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov.” In an essay printed in the Rep program, Ruhl uses the “t” word, and flatly announces “I came to this translation with no agenda.”
The concepts and emphases in this production come from the original script. Ruhl worked from a fresh literal translation Kristin Johnsen-Neshati further clarified with the help of New York actress/director/playwright Elise Thoron (who even writes musicals, such as Prozak and the Platypus and Green Violin) and Ruhl’s Russian-speaking sister-in-law Natalya Paramonova. But the textual changes are relatively minor, the sort of nips and tucks which directors and dramaturges work in without expecting extra credit.

Ruhl does make sure there’s humor in the play. She punches Chekhov’s jokes (including some which don’t announce themselves as jokes on the printed page) and adds a pull-my-finger fart joke, some Latin conjugation gags and some more metaphorical routines with echoes and rigidly posed photographs. But there’s nothing that seems out of place. There’s also more place not to seem out of—this Three Sisters goes the full four acts virtually uncut, clocking in at three hours. Ruhl retains far more Chekhov than expected, and rearranges almost nothing.

In this season of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, this level of respect is positively exhiilirating. This is a thoughtful, careful, well-articulated production of a classic. But I admit that I was suckered and distracted by that “new version” credit. Ruhl altered the tale of Eurydice by inserting a silent moment of hesitation and indecision in the final act. I kept waiting for this Three Sisters to turn like that, but it doesn’t. It just talks itself to a calm, reflectve ending, as Chekhov intended, the sisters Olga, Masha and Irina having matured a bit and endured a bit and no longer prattling quite so much about how they’re “going to Moscow!!!”

Moscow means Moscow in this production. There isn’t that vague Americanization or universalism or fantasizing found in some productions. The staging feels clipped and chopped and Russian. The city is pronounced to rhyme with “Bosco” (not “Boss cow”). The long Russian names are honored and enunciated. Debts are measured in rubles.

There are nonetheless a number of Americanizations and progressive interpretations in this generally traditional “new version,” yet they tend to come from Annie Smart’s set design rather than Ruhl’s script or Les Waters’ direction. For the first act, the set is a deep sitting room, with three-step platform, lavishly decorated and detailed. Later, the back end is blocked off by a new backdrop, confining scenes to a smaller, shallower playing area. The effect is of a 19th century melodrama. A really good one, direct and easy to follow. But an old fashioned melodrama all the same.

Top Girls: Three sisters, their brother, the husbands, the soldiers and everybody else. Photo by Joan Marcus.

At the head of that cast, the three sisters Olga (sturdy, redheaded Wendy Rich Stetson), Irina (blonde, busty Heather Wood) and Masha (svelte, severe, raven-tressed Natalia Payne) look completely unrelated, which has to be a conscious casting choice. Their differing outlooks and personalities unite through focused and intelligent acting; when these dissimilar siblings muse together on their disappointments and uncertain futures late in the play, director Les Waters groups them beautifully, with one on a bed and the other two huddled on the floor, with most of the stage bare.

The supporting cast is full of “types”: Thomas Jay Ryan (the monk in the Yale Rep production of Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play a couple of seasons ago) does the barking-yet-appealing soldier thing, behaving almost like a noir gumshoe. The servants are, to quote an Edwin Sanchez play, “more peasanty.” Emily Kitchens is a prissy Natasha who could have come from a Penelope Keith sitcom. Keith Reddin, another Passion Play veteran, channels Austin Pendleton as the dogged schoolteacher Kulygin, husband to Masha. In his drunken, bearded scenes, James Carpenter (Chebutykin) is a deadringer for John Carradine. Bruce McKenzie, a co-founder of the Sledgehammer Theatre in San Diego who has a Stanley Kowalski, an Iago and a Krapp’s Last Tape on his resume, conveys an outwardly calm-seeming yet inwardly hotwired presence as Lt.-Col. Vershinin; he’s the most unpredictable of the various handsome soldiers who distract the titular sisters from their day-to-day boredom.

…unless you count a couple of relatively minor soldiers vividly enlivened by current Yale School of Drama students Josiah Bania and Brian Wiles. Having run already honed their roles and found their rhythms in at Berkeley Repertory Theatre during this Three Sisters’ premiere production this past May, most of the cast have settled into their roles as assuredly as the show’s central families have settled into their rural homes. Bania and especially Wiles—part of a crack ensemble that raced through Chekhov’s The Wedding Reception at the Yale Cabaret last year—bring a noteworthy energy to their scenes.

Josiah Bania and Brian Wiles in back, at left, watching Natalia Payne's Masha. Photo by Joan Marcus.

There are lots of neat little touches. Settings built with different types of wood, a subtle reminder of the ages and emotional varieties of the onstage community. A confessional scene in which those hearing the monologue are hidden behind dressing screens. Irina fends off unwelcome advances while sitting in a wicker chair. A post-conflagration gathering which evokes the smoke and fury of a WWI battlefield. Lines which deftly combine naturalism and theatricality: like “Well, if the tea isn’t coming, we might as well philosophize.”

Chekhov’s Three Sisters didn’t need any help from Sarah Ruhl, and she was smart enough to realize that. She brings a dogged dramaturgical sense of order and precision to the project, especially in how she respect the full four-act scope of the play and its leisurely yet carefully honed and issue-laden conversations. The virtue of this production is not how “modern” or “sensational” is it. It’s how classically Chekhovian it is. And that turns out to be just the Three Sisters we need right now.