Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
✭✭✭✩✩
by Anton Chekhov, directed by László Marton
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
September 5-29, 2007
Soulpepper continues its traversal of Chekhov’s works with Three Sisters (1901), often considered his greatest play. Though directed with great insight and verve by László Marton, not all of the cast are up to the play’s demands.
Marton envisioned the plays as a group portrait come to life on a nearly bare stage. Victoria Wallace’s costumes suggest Canada in the 1940s rather than Russia in 1901 and Nicolas Billon’s new adaptation is thoroughly modern. Together they create the impression of moments of a vague past briefly glimpsed in the present. This coincides perfectly with the philosopher-soldier Vershinin’s frequent speculations on what future generations with make of his own. His optimism that the future will be better than his own time, where torture and executions have already been banned, become increasingly ironic both within the play and from our own sad vantage point.
The three sisters of the title are d’bi.young.anitafrika as Olga, Megan Follows as Masha and Patricia Fagan as Irina. What unites them and their brother Andrei (Kevin MacDonald) is the view of Moscow, where they grew up, as an ideal to which they must return to achieve happiness. Characters in the play debate explicitly whether happiness can ever be achieved and the characters’ relationships provide a wide range of answers. Andrei gives up his dream of being a professor in Moscow when he marries Natasha (Sarah Wilson), a woman who soon ruthlessly takes over the household. Masha, married to the pedantic Kulygin (Diego Matamoros), falls in love with the married Vershinin (Albert Schultz) while two men, Tusenbach (Mike Ross) and Soliony (Stephen Guy-McGrath), vie for Irina’s attentions. Meanwhile, Olga reconciles herself to a life of work without love. Chekhov’s exposure of the comic and tragic sides of the same characters is what makes them so endlessly fascinating.
We see these kinds of revelations in the performances of anitafrika, Follows, MacDonald, Matamoros and Schultz, who combine excellent diction with finely nuanced acting. Unfortunately, Fagan is far too given to mumbling and fits rather than gradations of emotion. Wilson’s voice becomes strident under the slightest pressure. Neither Guy-McGrath nor Ross seems to understand their characters. Tusenbach’s last scene with Irina should one of the most heart-wrenching in the play but here it falls completely flat. Chekhov’s plays demand acting ensembles where everyone is on the same high level. That’s why Marton’s previous Chekhov productions for Soulpepper, Platonov and Uncle Vanya, were so effective. Here, where the levels of acting are mixed, so are the results.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-09-12.
Photo: The cast of Soulpepper’s Three Sisters.
2007-09-12
Three Sisters