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Theatre

Three Sisters (Sydney Theatre Company) ★★★

by •
ABR Arts • 13 November 2017
Theatre

Three Sisters (Sydney Theatre Company) ★★★

by •
ABR Arts • 13 November 2017

After decades of English-language Chekhov productions following in the footsteps of Stanislavsky and Komisarjevsky in which historically accurately costumed actors wandered around a stage awash with gloom and torpor declaiming Constance Garnett’s constipated translations, directors finally discovered that the plays were strong enough to be removed from their original place and period. Janet Suzman’s magnificent Cherry Orchard (1997) transported the play to contemporary South Africa and Michael Blakemore, in his film Country Life (1994), showed that Uncle Vanya could work if it were transposed to Western Australia. Recently, Benedict Andrews’s modernised Three Sisters at the Young Vic (2012) was well received. Now the Sydney Theatre Company is presenting its own updated version. One is as unlikely to see a samovar in a contemporary Chekhov production as a horned helmet in a modern production of Wagner’s Ring.

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Ian Dickson

Ian Dickson has degrees in drama from Yale and the University of New South Wales, and is the co-author of the musical Better Known As Bee.

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Ian Dickson

Ian Dickson has degrees in drama from Yale and the University of New South Wales, and is the co-author of the musical Better Known As Bee.

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Comments (3)

  • 'Poshlost' indeed . . . one of Nabokov's favourite words.
    Posted by Paul Morgan
    21 November 2017
  • Thank you, Ian, for 'poshlost': it should be the word of the year, to convey our collective dismay at what passes for politics and much else, in America, the UK, and, alas, here. With gratitude.
    Posted by Morag Fraser
    15 November 2017
  • Thank you Ian Dickson for putting into words all that I suspect I would have said had I gone to Andrew Upton’s production of 'The Three Sisters'. Unfortunately (or perhaps luckily) I shall never forget the 2011 National Theatre Live’s film of 'The Cherry Orchard', which I saw in a Melbourne cinema. While the film’s production was properly praised (on May 18) by the Telegraph's reviewer, Charles Spencer, he was also spot-on when he wrote, ‘The Australian writer Andrew Upton, who is responsible for this new – and very free – version of Chekhov’s last and in my view greatest play, should be taken out of the theatre and thrown into the Thames along with his script.' Indeed. Chekhov’s pauses are famously deliberate, one of their functions being to allow us (the audience) to plumb along with the characters the underlying significance of the words that come out of their mouths. When Upton elects to help us out by filling in what he apparently thinks of as mere gaps with inept insertions of his own, it is time for us to get up and leave the theatre – even if we’re nowhere near the Thames.

    Living closer to the Yarra, I have also learned to avoid Simon Stone’s equally arrogant, gratuitously ‘different’ versions of Chekhov’s plays. Yet it is certainly not the case that no modern adaptation is acceptable. Michael Blakemore’s 1995 version of 'Uncle Vanya', the action transported to a sheep ranch in 1919 Australia, worked superbly. Accurately described in the New York Times of July 2 as a film of charm and visual splendor; it did no insult to the original. Not for him the brash assumption of many who mess with Chekhov that they are therefore on a par with him.
    Posted by Judith Armstrong
    14 November 2017

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