Anton Chekhov's ""Three Sisters,"" now running at the University Theatre by director James Bohnen, is not a play for everyone. Chekhov is a playwright many have a hard time coming to terms with. His plays are full of upper crust do-nothing characters that change very little, if at all, over the course of the play and talk incessant pseudo-philosophy about having to endure the pain and disappointments of life.
Why then is Chekhov one of the most celebrated playwrights of the last few hundred years? Because with him, it's all a joke. His characters, their pontifications, and by extension, his view of life—it's all one big joke, so subtle and dry that if you don't pay close attention to all the absurdities, you just might start taking things seriously.
And nothing could be worse, considering once you realize little in ""Three Sisters"" is meant in earnest, you are set to enjoy one of the most subtle, biting satires of the upper class ever put on stage.
The setting is a nowhere Russian town at the turn of the century, where three sisters—matriarchal Olga (Olivia Dawson), depressed Masha (Leia Espericueta) and starry-eyed Irina (Vera Varlamov)—struggle to find intellectual meaning in their rural lives and dream of moving to Moscow, where they hope their introverted, overweight brother Andrei (Jesse Michael Mothershed) will become a famous scientist and they will finally be satisfied. Over the course of the play and the next few years of their lives, however, all they do is walk around repeating their views on life and their complaints about each other, while consigning themselves to uninteresting jobs and engaging in failed marriages and doomed love affairs.
Masha comes the closest to achieving happiness by ignoring her willfully simple-minded husband Kulygin (Jeff Godsey in an endearingly goofy performance) and going after Vershinin (David Wilson-Brown), a dreamer who constantly looks ahead to how good the world will be hundreds of years from now. But when push comes to shove, Vershinin is unwilling to sacrifice his cushy, do-nothing military job in order to stay with the woman he loves.
Are these characters subject to forces outside of their control? No, not really, as it's made clear these well-to-do characters can quit and start whatever jobs they want. The problem is they're all slaves to the traditions and expectations of a Russian upper class that they can't see is crumbling in the face of a changing world. Chekhov and the talented actors in this production make each character's desires clear, and so when they choose inaction boredom you can't help but feel the tragedy of their lives, and you want to laugh at the absurdity of it.
Not to say the play doesn't afford plenty of straight-forward laughs. Andy Rice plays Chebutykin, the aging army doctor who gets drunk constantly and sings children's ditties when others die or basically want to die; Katheryn Bilbo is hysterical and convincingly irritating as Natasha, the sister-in-law who makes life a living hell with her petty power struggles and nonstop tales of how smart her 1-year-old baby is.
But most of the humor in ""Three Sisters"" is of a far more dry variety, and in that way it makes you feel a sense of despair even more convincing than if had the play been a straight tragedy. ""Three Sisters"" is a very funny, incisive tale of people who fail their dreams and close their eyes to the ridiculousness of their lives and concerns. But if you open yourself to the challenging humor of Chekhov's play and check out this fantastic production at University Theatre, you won't be disappointed.
