Playwright: Janusz Glowacki
At: Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland
Contact: ( 773 ) 384-0494,
www.trapdoortheatre.com;
$20, two for one on Thursdays
Runs through: April 15
BY CATEY SULLIVAN
If Chekhov had been a cartoonist, he might have created stories and characters along the line of Janusz Glowacki's The Fourth Sister. Running through April 15 at the Trap Door Theatre, the cacophonous, absurdist drama paints the familiar Chekhovian conventions into a garish farce, where scrambling physicality replaces studied manners and shrieking wails replace quiet sorrow.
In this story of Russian sisters, everyone wears their hearts—in screaming neon—on their sleeves.
Directors Beata Pilch and Krishna LeFan have created quite the wild romp of an evening, starting with an introit of booming Eastern European folk songs performed live and with real panache. It's a shame the singer isn't credited as such in the program; whoever he was, he was terrific.
But the perpetually manic energy and broad acting that permeate the production plays into a problem inherent in the translation ( by Glowacki and Eva Nagorski ) of the script itself. In Glowacki's story, nobody really grows or changes. The characters are desperate and frenzied through beginning, middle and end. Some are killed along the way, some change clothes, and one gives birth, but on a fundamentally emotional level, everyone stays static.
That's not to say the production doesn't have merit—Trap Door has mounted an adventurous show with the verve and heart that defines the company.
Furthermore, Janusz has stiletto-sharp observations to make about pop culture in the United States. It's ironic that a native of Poland can define 'Pretty Woman' better than about 99.99 percent of moviegoers stateside.
Actually, pop culture plays a significant part in The Fourth Sister, as sisters and Muscovites Wiera ( Pilch ) , Tania ( Nicole Wiesner ) and Katia ( Carolyn Shoemaker ) skid from one crisis to the next and try to keep from starving to death. Princess Di, Dodi, 'A Beautiful Mind,' the Oscars and some excellently placed disco music ( great work all around by sound designer Bob Rokos ) combine to represent the ease, glitter and glitz the sisters yearn for.
Janusz works such contemporary motifs in with ease, as well as some lacerating allusions to fairy tales ( The fourth sister is actually an orphan boy whose exploits play like a cracked-mirror version of 'Cinderella' ) ; 'Hamlet' ( 'He talked too much and did too little' ) ; and Chekhov himself ( 'I hope one day someone will realize just how tragic we sisters are' ) .
But desperate cries for help are rarely this funny in Chekhov:
'I know it's late and I know it's Ramadan, but this is an emergency!' one character pleas in a wee-hours phone call.
Everything comes to a whoppingly nihilistic climax in an audacious bit of galloping chaos that's part Rosemary's Baby and part final act of Scarface.
If only there was just a bit more emotional heft.
