Hillary Clemens, Jenny Connell, Calliope Porter, Paul DíAddario and Jack McCabe (left to right) in Three Sisters. Photo courtesy of The Gift Theatre_______
Playwright: Anton Chekhov
Where: The Gift Theatre, 4802 N. Milwaukee
Phone: 773-283-7071; $20-$25
Runs through: through Sept. 30
BY CATEY SULLIVAN
In a house roiling with visitors and family, the titular women of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters exist in suffocating loneliness and alienation. Their eternal longing for Moscow is the stuff of everyday anguish, an ever-present grief made all the more unbearable by its unmitigated ordinariness. Olga, Masha and Irina don't suffer the magisterial sorrow of cataclysmic misfortune; their fate is worse: Every day, a little death, in the parlor, in the buttons in the bread.
Directing Chekhov's drama of dreams forever deferred, Gift Theatre Artistic Director Michael Patrick Thornton shows a keen eye for illuminating the stark, yearning poetry of melancholia. This is solid if not sublime Chekhov, and it is astutely leavened by Thornton's grasp of the gallows comedy that makes Three Sisters such a daunting challenge to bring to life and such an accurate portrayal of the absurd ache that largely defines the human condition.
A minimalist set ( two massive pillars on either side of the Gift's closet-sized stage and a dozen or so straight-backed black chairs ) emphasizes the complex, emotional intensity that propels Three Sisters toward its bitter end. Lighting matches against the darkness, weeping in each other's arms or falling into the clean, clear bliss of straight vodka, the ensemble fills the all-but-bare stage with emotion. Virtually every role here is a meaty one, fraught with opportunities gnashing through the scenery. Thornton coaxes performances of admirable restraint from the large cast—this is a group in which less is more, with the final impact immersing the audience in a cumulative wave of broken-hearted desolation.
What resounds so harshly in Three Sisters is Chekhov's relentless exposure of how the wonder and aspirations of youth slip so easily—and so inevitably—into the banal compromises of adulthood. Andrey ( Paul D'Addario ) , the genius brother of the three sisters, goes from dreams of becoming an inventor or renowned scientist to celebrating his post to petty local bureaucracy. Irina ( Hillary Clemens ) speaks with the thrill of unexpected roses of falling in love but marries instead for bourgeoisie safety. Masha ( Calliope Porter ) dares to dive headlong into passion, and pays for it by suffering a loss that makes a cruel lie of the adage that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
The ensemble is uneven in spots—Army Captain Solyany speaks with a 'g'day mate'-jarring Australian accent and the doctor Chebutykin has a contemporary sensibility at odds with the world of turn-of-the-century provincial Russia. But as a whole, the group delivers with the sisters. As Olga, Jenny Connell is a portrait of wrenching hope slowly dissolving into tightly controlled desolation, while Porter's Masha and Clemens' Irina provide compelling depictions of survivors facing despondency.
As for costume designer Branimira Ivanova's period-perfect, richly detailed apparel, it steeps the production in authenticity from the heavy, swooping skirts and high-necked, lace-adorned blouses of the women to the golden epaulets of the Russian soldiers.