Three Sisters was one of the few plays that I was very familiar with going in to this trip, as I had read the play multiple times as well as acted out a few of the scenes in various classes, so I was pretty excited going into this production. That excitement unfortunately didn't last very long.
To set the stage for you all here, the set was inside of a skeletal outline of a house, where neon florescent lights made up the barest outline that was needed for the audience to understand that it was, in fact, a house. The lights would then glow various different colors, such as red for the fire or green for the fourth act (which was originally set outside). Inside the house, there were a few modern looking couches and tables scattered around, but almost all of them were at a right angle to the audience, which is normally a huge no-no when making a set design, as the audience would only ever be able to see half of a characters face. Finally, and most significantly, to compensate for the right angles, there was a cameraman on either side of the stage recording the production, and that live footage was played in real time across three giant screens that dominated the upper parts of the set.
Because the actors were being filmed and projected onto massive screens, they had no need to act in a larger way in order for everyone to be able to see what their character was feeling. In fact, their acting was incredibly minuscule, and just fantastic. Every tiny little twitch could be seen by everyone, and because of that, something as simple as an eye movement was able to speak volumes about character. These small movements thus provided great contrast and focus to anything else that happened, from two people touching hands or crossing the room to a particularly large hug or incredibly energetic make-out session. While I think all of these parts combined to make a piece of theatre that was exactly what Chekhov imagined the emotional world of Three Sisters to be (so monotonous that even the smallest acts would greatly affect all those involved), I don't think it made for a very good piece of theatre.
Yes, the acting was amazing, but because everything was played so so small, it felt like the characters were just bored by everything and had no stakes in any situation they were in. It never felt like they needed anything, the actors simply played the existence of the characters very well. I had no idea why Tuzenbach would choose to sacrifice themselves for Irina, because I never saw anything even resembling passion coming from them, and when Irina cries out "To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!" in desperation at the end of the second act, I could literally only tell that that was happening because I recognized the word for Moscow. She looked no more troubled than she had been for all the rest of the production. Not only that, but the boredom the characters seemed to have and the incredibly small amount of events that actually happened made for a boring piece of theatre, which is obviously a fairly undesirable result to end up with.
Also, because everything was played so small and all the furniture was at right angles to the audience, there was really very little point to looking anywhere but the screens. Of course, if all the audience is doing is looking at a screen for the full performance, it begs the question of "why isn't this just a movie? Why does it need to be live theatre?" I was not able to answer that question.
My final complaint is a smaller one, but I was confused by a lot of the casting decisions. While I'm all down for gender bent Tuzenbach, I didn't understand why this Tuzenbach looked so attractively cool, since the script describes him as awkward and ugly. The same goes for a steely Kulygin. And in a world where every character, even deaf old Ferapont, was neat and polished, the shambling nature and worn down clothing of Chebutykin made absolutely no sense to me.
To sum up my points here, while I think that the production was incredibly acted and perfectly displayed the type of life that Chekhov had envisioned for his characters (albeit in a more modern setting of course), the minuscule acting and dependence on media made for a play that was just not a good piece of theatre.
To set the stage for you all here, the set was inside of a skeletal outline of a house, where neon florescent lights made up the barest outline that was needed for the audience to understand that it was, in fact, a house. The lights would then glow various different colors, such as red for the fire or green for the fourth act (which was originally set outside). Inside the house, there were a few modern looking couches and tables scattered around, but almost all of them were at a right angle to the audience, which is normally a huge no-no when making a set design, as the audience would only ever be able to see half of a characters face. Finally, and most significantly, to compensate for the right angles, there was a cameraman on either side of the stage recording the production, and that live footage was played in real time across three giant screens that dominated the upper parts of the set.
Because the actors were being filmed and projected onto massive screens, they had no need to act in a larger way in order for everyone to be able to see what their character was feeling. In fact, their acting was incredibly minuscule, and just fantastic. Every tiny little twitch could be seen by everyone, and because of that, something as simple as an eye movement was able to speak volumes about character. These small movements thus provided great contrast and focus to anything else that happened, from two people touching hands or crossing the room to a particularly large hug or incredibly energetic make-out session. While I think all of these parts combined to make a piece of theatre that was exactly what Chekhov imagined the emotional world of Three Sisters to be (so monotonous that even the smallest acts would greatly affect all those involved), I don't think it made for a very good piece of theatre.
Yes, the acting was amazing, but because everything was played so so small, it felt like the characters were just bored by everything and had no stakes in any situation they were in. It never felt like they needed anything, the actors simply played the existence of the characters very well. I had no idea why Tuzenbach would choose to sacrifice themselves for Irina, because I never saw anything even resembling passion coming from them, and when Irina cries out "To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!" in desperation at the end of the second act, I could literally only tell that that was happening because I recognized the word for Moscow. She looked no more troubled than she had been for all the rest of the production. Not only that, but the boredom the characters seemed to have and the incredibly small amount of events that actually happened made for a boring piece of theatre, which is obviously a fairly undesirable result to end up with.
Also, because everything was played so small and all the furniture was at right angles to the audience, there was really very little point to looking anywhere but the screens. Of course, if all the audience is doing is looking at a screen for the full performance, it begs the question of "why isn't this just a movie? Why does it need to be live theatre?" I was not able to answer that question.
My final complaint is a smaller one, but I was confused by a lot of the casting decisions. While I'm all down for gender bent Tuzenbach, I didn't understand why this Tuzenbach looked so attractively cool, since the script describes him as awkward and ugly. The same goes for a steely Kulygin. And in a world where every character, even deaf old Ferapont, was neat and polished, the shambling nature and worn down clothing of Chebutykin made absolutely no sense to me.
To sum up my points here, while I think that the production was incredibly acted and perfectly displayed the type of life that Chekhov had envisioned for his characters (albeit in a more modern setting of course), the minuscule acting and dependence on media made for a play that was just not a good piece of theatre.
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