No�l Coward, London
If you were forced to live troll-like under a bridge and regularly found your living room furniture flying around in circles, you would probably want to get away to Moscow as soon as possible, too. So who can blame Chekhov's siblings who, in Galina Volchek's revival for Moscow's Sovremennik theatre, are weighed down not just by the whirligig of time and mounting disappointment, but by some pretty clunky visual metaphors in an evening that begins and ends with the sisters standing on the bridge, lost in an existential fog like the shell-shocked survivors of some terrible catastrophe.
The catastrophe is, of course, their lives. It's a striking image, and Volchek's production is initially interesting in the way it uses movement and flying furniture to represent the inner excitement and turmoil of the sisters whose optimism turns to despair when it becomes clear they are going nowhere. But the production is in thrall to its overbearing design, and it lumbers along slowly, always looking handsome but also slightly creaky and old-fashioned.
Perhaps, just as British companies are often too in awe of Shakespeare to make the plays seem fresh and modern, Russian directors have a similar problem with Chekhov. There are some very good things here, and most of it is in the detail: the coup de foudre of Masha and Vershinin, who later risk all because they cannot keep their eyes off each other; the playfulness with which the sisters initially treat each other and their brother; Natasha's use of sex as a wheedling weapon; the hints that Kulygin and Olga might have made a happy couple. But while some of the acting is terrific, particularly Chulpan Khamatova's intense, self-absorbed Masha, quite a lot of it is so-so. It's a respectful and respectable evening, but no whirlwind of theatrical excitement.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/jan/25/three-sisters-review
Radio 4 Science fiction Waste US supreme court Equality Alastair Cook
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