'THREE SISTERS' AT BERKELEY REP
                     A Society's Disturbing Decline and Fall 
                                              By Carol Benet
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area theater
                                                                 Weeks starting April 16, 2011
                                                                 Vol. 13, No. 92
            BERKELEY---My guest at the new adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre said that this was the most disturbing play he had seen.  Yet there is no violence on stage; no revolution taking place outside; and a fire and a death from a duel are both offstage.  But still, Three Sisters is profoundly disturbing, I agree.
            Three sisters, a brother and his wife live in the house of their dead parents in a small town in Russia.  The Prozorovs are an educated family as their father was a high officer in the army.  They first lived in Moscow and quickly got a taste of that cultured life. And this eternal longing for the impossible dream, here the return to Moscow, is the grounding for all of Chekhov’s plays.  No wonder Stanislavsky, the famous director whose actors learned to emote and who was to influence all actors afterwards, produced Chekhov’s works.
            Although written at the end of the 19th century, the characters’ many problems are eternal ones resonating today.  The sister-in-law Natasha (Emily Kitchens) is an arriviste---She wants to rid the house of the family servant Anfisa (Barbara Oliver) who has cared for them for 30 years.  And that’s just a starter as she has plans for taking over the house that her husband, the weak Andrei (Alex Moggridge), has mortgaged without the sisters knowing it.
            These interfamilial tensions are heightened by the other people who circle around them, all military men placed temporarily in the town.  The doctor Chebutykin (James Carpenter) is a reformed -- for a short time -- alcoholic.  Masha (Natalia Payne) deceives her husband, Kulygin (Keith Reddin),  the foolish and overeducated high school teacher. The oldest sister Olga (Wendy Rich Stetson) is an old maid.   And the youngest Irina (Heather Wood) is stuck in a boring job working for the city administration. 
            The Commander Vershinin (Bruce McKenzie) pictures a utopia in hundreds of years while the Baron (Thomas Jay Ryan) disagrees but spouts his own philosophy.  And despite this period of peace they see suffering all around them.  They allude to the coming events in Russian. Herein lies the dramatic irony at work in all of Chekhov’s plays.  The audience wants to tell the actors, “This suffering and boredom you feel now is nothing compared to what will come (the revolution, world wars).”
            In the second act there is a fire in town and many of the people have lost everything, but not the Prozorovs. Saddest of all is the announcement that the military is moving out of this small town and the three sisters will be stuck there.
            Why produce Three Sisters again?  Does this three hour play with one intermission need to be reprised so often?  Sara Ruhl---director, playwright, and MacArthur Genius Award winner---thought so.  She found a new translation (Natalya Paramonoa and Kristin Johnsen-Neshati) and with the direction of Les Waters, they highlight the peculiarities in the play: Masha’s whistling and Solyony’s chirping, nonsequiturs in the dialogue, plus many silences.   Ruhl also cuts the original 4 acts down to two and makes the entire play shorter for the modern audience.
            The current production at the Berkeley Rep. is brilliant, highlighted by the sets (Annie Smart) and costumes (Illona Somogyi), lighting (Alexander V. Nichols) and sound (David Budries).
            Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, running through May 22. For info:  (510) 647 2949 or go online.
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        © Carol Benet 2011
        Carol Benet is a regular theater reviewer for artssf.com.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly)focus on theater, dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into recordings by local artists, and a few departures into books (by authors of the region)as well.