In my notes to the Globe’s first ever production of a Chekhov play I’d scrawled and underlined the word ‘BECKETTIAN!!’, thinking I was making a piercing and original observation that, yes, this take on Three Sisters had a certain Samuel Beckett vibe to it.
Afterwards I looked at adaptor/translator Rory Mullarkey’s accompanying essay, and noted that he begins it with a quote from Waiting for Godot, so maybe he wasn’t intending to be as subtle as all that, but it’s nice to know you’re on the right track.
Mullarkey has spoken about his discontent with contemporary English-language adaptations of Chekhov, noting they impose too much stuff on him. And while I feel Mullarkey has probably imposed stuff here too, it’s weird how his take actually feels novel, recasting the titular trio of sisters as less fading, doomed aristocrats waiting to get crushed by the Russian Revolution, and more trapped in an absurdist pantomime.
Caroline Steinbeis’s production starts effectively: Michelle Terry’s Olga seems jerky and unnatural as she delivers her opening monologue, speaking at a virtual babble. Shannon Tarbet’s black-clad Masha is snarling, sardonic and talks in discombobulated non sequiturs. The piping in their old country home clanks and groans ominously. It feels like they’re automata, part of some great machine, doomed to repeat their days over and over and over.
What we see, slowly, is the machine break down, as fraying interpersonal relationships and the apparent descent into madness of Natalya (Natalie Klamar) – the sisters’ sister-in-law – slowly causes their comfortably numb limbo of an existence to stop working. Mullarkey’s translation smartly exacerbates the contrasts between the absurd professed optimism of Paul Ready’s genial soldier Vershinin – who talks about how wonderful life in the future will be – and the callous, booze-blunted nihilism of Peter Wight’s doctor Chebutykin – who by the end treats a tragic killing as a petty irritation. There are no house lights in the candlelit Wanamaker, but when the soldiers who’ve given the town a semblance of cosmopolitanism up and leave in the final scene, the lighting switches to an unnerving imitation of house lights. The show feels over, the machine is broken… and we’re still stuck here with the sisters in its broken cogs and springs.
Shout out to candlelight designer Anna Watson
If I’m making all this sound unimpeachably wonderful, then there are moments when Steinbeis’s direction feels like she has great ideas but isn’t able to entirely follow them through. The stylised acting of the opening scene falls by the wayside. The Wanamaker can engender a naturalism that plays against the tone of the production. Conversely, though, there is some sublime candlework here. Yes, sorry, I really am talking about candles, but for many directors it’s clear that the lighting in the Wanamaker is a hurdle to be surmounted – here Steinbeis and team (shout out to candlelight designer Anna Watson) really make it work, especially in the nightmarishly lit second act.
There are also some fine acting performances – Globe boss Terry clearly enjoys throwing herself into something a bit lower key than last summer’s controversial Richard III; her husband Ready gives a hugely winning, charmingly guileless take on Vershinin. Newcomer Ruby Thompson gives a lovely, bittersweet turn as youthful Irina. But it was Tarbet who I found really impressive, a potent mix of seething anger and fey otherworldliness.
If it ultimately feels like a relatively minor production of the play I wonder if that’s down to the Jacobean theatre setting and the relative lack of pathos in Mullarkey’s darkly comic, lightly absurd adaptation. But it’s still a very good production – I don’t think Shakespeare need worry he’s going to get supplanted as top dog at his home the Globe, but the other great playwrights Terry has thrown into the mix during her time here make for some very interesting house guests.
