cktimes.ca

Three Sisters
Dalal Badr as Irina, Irene Poole as Olga and Lucy Peacock as Masha in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s 2009 production of Three Sisters.
Photo: David Hou Three Sisters
Lucy Peacock as Masha and Irene Poole as Olga in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s 2009 production of Three Sisters.
Photo: David Hou

Review by John Gardiner

One of the great things about attending the Stratford Shakespeare Festival each year are the hidden gems we discover. We know there will be some great theatre, because that's what Stratford does, but each year we attend a couple of productions and we're not sure what to expect. One of the hidden gems this year is the Stratford production of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters.

It's one of those examples where you take some great writing, combine it with a great cast and good direction and you're bound to come up a winner. And the story of the Prozorov sisters and the trials and tribulations they face as their lives unfold is nothing more than most of us face in our lives. It is a story of lost promise and broken dreams and the reality that life can be a hard and difficult place.

Most of us travel through our lives holding onto hopes and dreams for a better life. The Prozorov sisters find themselves stuck in the backwater city where there father was a military commander before his death. The girls have only one dream – and that is to return to Moscow where life is good and civilized and they will finally be happy. They have pinned all of their hopes on their brother, who they think will one day become a professor at the university in Moscow and take them away from all the drabness and dreariness of their current lives.

The problem is that their brother is a weak man who has married a shrew and has a gambling problem, so there is little hope he'll be able to fulfill the girls' dreams. As the story of great disappointment and endless melodrama unfolds, you can just feel that the dream will forever remain out of reach....

The cast in this production is really good. Irene Poole, Lucy Peacock and Dala Badr play the Prazorov sisters and they are all excellent. I really enjoyed Lucy Peacock's portrayal of Masha, the unhappily married middle sister. I have long realized that Peacock is one of the shining stars of the Stratford Festival, but have never really been "grabbed" by her in the past. This was a great performance from beginning to end.

Tom McCamus is one of my favourites at Stratford and has been since I saw him in Three Penny Opera some years back. He performs the role of the philosophizing and dashing Lt. Col. Vershinin, who has come to command the military brigade in the city where the girls live. And McCamus' character delivers some great lines in keeping with his philosophy that it is impossible to find true happiness in the world in the here and now. He feels humanity must suffer endlessly until they get it right at some point in the distant future.

Other notables in the cast were Robert King who played the role of the despondent Doctor Chebutykin, a man who appears beaten by life and merely living out his days. Juan Chioran is suitably strange at Solyony and Sean Arbuckle plays an endearing part as Baron Tuzenbach – the character who drips goodness and who you just know is headed for a bad end.

Special mention to Kelli Fox as Natasha, brother Andrei's domineering and insensitive wife. Fox is extremely strong in the role and delivers some explosive dialogue that really sets the audience back......

This is just a really great piece of theatre and one that is delivered flawlessly. I found it highly emotional and intense – my favourite type of theatre. However, be warned.....this is not for everyone. The people who sat behind us at the Tom Patterson Theatre simply didn't "get" the play and found it tedious and boring...."too much like real life", as one of them commented at intermission.

But if you like some serious melodrama and and you enjoy seeing theatre that offers commentary on the state of humanity, this is really great stuff. And that's my cup of tea....emotion and intensity are what I look for in live theatre..... .