‘Three Sisters’, by RashDash theatre company, is a reaction to the popular play ‘Three Sisters’, by Anton Chekhov.
Kind of.
Well it is, but to frame this wild, exhilarating night of feminist theatre as pure reaction to an old play written by a dead guy is to fall into one of its smart psychological traps.
Supplemented by two additional musicians, the three members of RashDash – Helen Goalen, Abbi Greenland and Becky Wilkie – each nominally assume the roles of Olga, Marsha and Irena, Chekhov’s trio of siblings fading away in rural exile. Except here, it’s the opposite: the three are grimly clinging on to a half-life in central London as their friends drift away.
Except that this isn’t what it seems: later they admit that these scenes are supposed to be a man’s idea of how women might tackle this play.
In fact their own ideas are much wilder: dance, nudity, songs, bear costumes and sardonic broadsides against the patriarchy are the tools RashDash use; towards the end it’s more akin to a pulsing, pounding, snarling, ranting piece of gig theatre than anything that might even remotely be described as ‘Chekhovian’.
There are obvious similarities to RashDash’s last work, ‘Two Man Show’. In both works a premise is posited and then relentlessly fucked with, the suggestion being that truly feminist theatre needs to break away from the forms and structures of the mainstream.
Somebody attending who is expecting a regular version of Chekhov's play… well they may very well have a terrible time, though in all honesty the Russian legend comes out largely unscathed; RashDash’s proposition is less that there is anything intrinsically wrong with ‘Three Sisters’, more a questioning of what exactly it has to do with them (it is alluded to early on that somebody suggested that acting in a production of the play might be good for their careers).
I am probably not really conveying how fun it all is: ‘Three Sisters’ is fun when it’s being an arch Chekhov impression, fun when it’s making a racket, fun when Greenland slumps in a chair and witheringly snarls through some critical notices for recent productions of ‘Three Sisters’.
It certainly feels like a cousin to Ella Hickson’s recent Almeida hit ‘The Writer’, but where that lays into the theatre establishment with pure fury, ‘Three Sisters’ is a little too cool for that – it lets Chekhov come in for the high five, then pulls away, laughing.
Kind of.
Well it is, but to frame this wild, exhilarating night of feminist theatre as pure reaction to an old play written by a dead guy is to fall into one of its smart psychological traps.
Supplemented by two additional musicians, the three members of RashDash – Helen Goalen, Abbi Greenland and Becky Wilkie – each nominally assume the roles of Olga, Marsha and Irena, Chekhov’s trio of siblings fading away in rural exile. Except here, it’s the opposite: the three are grimly clinging on to a half-life in central London as their friends drift away.
Except that this isn’t what it seems: later they admit that these scenes are supposed to be a man’s idea of how women might tackle this play.
In fact their own ideas are much wilder: dance, nudity, songs, bear costumes and sardonic broadsides against the patriarchy are the tools RashDash use; towards the end it’s more akin to a pulsing, pounding, snarling, ranting piece of gig theatre than anything that might even remotely be described as ‘Chekhovian’.
There are obvious similarities to RashDash’s last work, ‘Two Man Show’. In both works a premise is posited and then relentlessly fucked with, the suggestion being that truly feminist theatre needs to break away from the forms and structures of the mainstream.
Somebody attending who is expecting a regular version of Chekhov's play… well they may very well have a terrible time, though in all honesty the Russian legend comes out largely unscathed; RashDash’s proposition is less that there is anything intrinsically wrong with ‘Three Sisters’, more a questioning of what exactly it has to do with them (it is alluded to early on that somebody suggested that acting in a production of the play might be good for their careers).
I am probably not really conveying how fun it all is: ‘Three Sisters’ is fun when it’s being an arch Chekhov impression, fun when it’s making a racket, fun when Greenland slumps in a chair and witheringly snarls through some critical notices for recent productions of ‘Three Sisters’.
It certainly feels like a cousin to Ella Hickson’s recent Almeida hit ‘The Writer’, but where that lays into the theatre establishment with pure fury, ‘Three Sisters’ is a little too cool for that – it lets Chekhov come in for the high five, then pulls away, laughing.