Playwright: Stephen Louis Grush. At: LASTmatch (sic) Theatre Company,
Royal George Gallery, 1641 N. Halsted. Tickets: 312-988-9000; www.lastmatch.org; $25. Runs through: March 19
I didn't see the press release for Feet of Clay, so I didn't know beforehand that it was based on Chekhov's Three Sisters. However, it took only minutes to figure out as Stephen Louis Grush's play is quite faithful to the original, even down to correlating the character names: Olga, Masha and IrinaChekhov's sistersbecome Orah, Matty and Iris in Feet of Clay.
Chekhov's play concerns the lives and loves of three adult sisters (and their wastrel brother) who are the children of an army general. His death leaves them stranded in a dreary, rural Russian military town. They dream of returning to the social and cultural high-life of Moscow, where they grew up, but as several years pass it becomes clear they never will. Grush transposes Chekhov's late-19th Century play to a contemporary Louisiana army town where the orphaned sisters dream of New Orleans.
Grush's transposition is successful in part. He's evocation of a Louisiana parish near Fort Polk reeks of the bayou, with convincing use of regional vocabulary and dialect, and proper details of food and drink. In place of Russian military men, Grush fills the ranks with Iraq War (the first one and the present one) vets and Army lifers, and that works well, too.
But all of that is little more than a writing exercise in style and adaptation. I can discern no vital or apparent reason for creating this American version, other than as practice. Along the way, Grush has made one large, fatal error: He's condensed Chekhov's work into a much shorter play. Chekhov's three acts become three scenes in Grush's long one-act. What that doesand this is the fatal partis to rob the audience of the ability to come to know the sisters deeply and sympathetically, and to see the relationships grow between them and the men they love. Indeed, the men's roles are so greatly reduced that one scarcely understands that there ARE relationships until they are announced. The intimate moments are missing.
Above all, Grush's swift version does not allow the audience to feel the slow and heavy passage of time. To weep for these women and understand their heartache and loss one must spend a prolonged period of time with them. Even in the shorthand of theater, that needs to be several hours.
Director David Perez has staged the play well in the tiny Royal George Gallery, which offers little room to move. Scenic designer John Wilson provides atmosphere with a crumbling wooden porch, perhaps an antebellum remnant. Kimberly Logan (Orah), Jennifer Alexander (Matty) and Leah Karpel (Iris) display nice intensity and pent-up energy. But the play doesn't provide enough for us to understand the sources and complexities of that energy.