Three Sisters

Three Sisters is the only one of Chekhov's four great plays that I have never seen in a live production. But this weekend I gorged on it, watching two productions on DVD. Both are from 1970: one is from the British National Theater, under the direction of Sir Laurence Olivier, and the other is a production of the BBC, directed by Cedric Messina. Both have their estimable qualities.

In contrast with The Seagull, Three Sisters is labeled a drama, though a death by gunshot occurs at the end of both. Of course, as is famous with Chekhov, the death occurs off-stage, as most of the momentous events do in his plays. Instead we see the characters discussing these events, usually in a kind of tired stillness. It doesn't make for conventional excitement, but if one listens one is enraptured by the deep feeling of all the characters.

One character says: "We're not happy and we can't be happy: we only want happiness." He's right, because of all the characters that traipse through the house of the Prozorov's, only a select few achieve that perfect semblance of happiness. Certainly the three women of the title don't. Olga, the eldest, an old maid at twenty-eight, is a schoolteacher. Masha, in the middle, has become bitter from being forced into a marriage with a much older man, a schoolmaster who at first intimidated her, but now bores her. And Irena, the youngest, who dreams of returning to Moscow, where the girls were born and spent their childhoods. They were uprooted by their father, a brigade commander, who took them to the provincial town where they now live. Masha describes it thusly: "Knowing three languages in a town like this is an unnecessary luxury. In fact, not even a luxury, but just a sort of useless encumbrance, it's rather like having a sixth finger on your hand." They have come to consider Moscow as a metaphor for happiness, a Never-Neverland that perpetually remains out of their reach. They will go to Moscow as easily as they will go to the moon.

They have a brother, Andrey, who, as the play begins, is to become a professor. But he marries a local woman, Natasha, something of a country bumpkin. As time goes on, though, Natasha exerts her will, ending up controlling the household, as the sisters dither about Moscow. Masha begins an affair with the new brigade commander, Vershinin, who has a wife that periodically tries to kill herself. Masha's husband, the silly schoolmaster, who always is coming into a room looking for her, knows he is being cuckolded, but doesn't mind it, and insists he is happy.

There are other military men who frequent the house. One of them, Baron Toozenbach, is in love with Irena. In a foreshadowing of events that would shake Russia in a generation's time, Irena says: "Man must work by the sweat of his brow whatever his class, and that should make up the whole meaning and purpose of his life." The Baron resigns his commission to go to work, just to please her, but she resists his advances. Finally, though, she agrees to marry him.

At the same time, she is also loved by Captain Soliony, an odd fellow who is so socially inept that he hides behind bizarre, mordant comments (he tells Natasha, after she brags about her baby, that if he had such a child he would "grill it in a pan and eat it"). He and the Baron are always quibbling with each other, although the Baron, generously, tells Soliony he likes him. But in the last act the Captain challenges the Baron to a duel.

Hovering around the scenes is an army doctor, an old man who boards with the sisters. He loved their mother, and seems to be patiently waiting for death. He has a history of a trouble with drink, and in one scene manages to smash an heirloom and reveal Natasha's affair with the local politician.

Three Sisters is infused with melancholy. It's hard to know who's suffering is more keen. Perhaps it is Andrey's, who never gets his professorship and ends up a bureaucrat. As the play goes on, and years pass, he rues his marriage, and says, bitingly of his wife: "There's something about her which pulls her down to the level of an animal--a sort of mean, blind, thick-skinned animal--anyway, not a human being." But Natasha, even more than the schoolmaster, has achieved the happiness that the other characters can barely imagine.

Still, the play ends on a note of hope. The sisters, while the doctor sings a childish tune nearby, are determined to carry on: "We must go on living," Masha says, and then Olga, in a rhapsodic flourish, ends the play with: "Our sufferings may mean happiness for the people who come after us. There'll be a time when peace and happiness reign in the world, and then we shall be remembered kindly and blessed. No, my dear sisters, life isn't finished for us yet! We're going to live! The band is playing so cheerfully and and joyfully--maybe, if we wait a little longer, we shall find out why we live, why we suffer. Oh, if we only knew!"

The two productions are markedly different. Olivier's, in which he plays the doctor, is half an hour longer and more stately. Joan Plowright, his wife, plays Masha and Alan Bates is Vershinin. The one bit of license he takes is enacting the duel, and showing that the Baron, who knows that Irena will never love him, purposely allows Soliony to shoot him.

The BBC version is livelier. Anthony Hopkins plays Andrey, with Eileen Atkins as Olga and Janet Suzman as Masha.