Volume 2, Number 12 · July 30, 1964
To Moscow Again
By F.W. Dupee
The Three Sisters
by Anton Chekhov
Actors Studio Production at the Morosco Theater
'The profundity of Chekhov's works is inexhaustible to the actor,' Stanislavsky said. But under present theater conditions, Chekhov's profundity, like Shakespeare's, can involve liabilities, for audience and actors alike. Perhaps it was so even in the patriarchal days of the archetypal Moscow Art Theater, Chekhov's shrine. There is evidence that things did not always go well there, although the playwright himself was at hand, or at least in Yalta, for consultation. He once complained that the officers' uniforms in The Three Sisters were too smart. The Russian military has ceased to be a glittering elite, had grown more cultured and shabbier. (The officers in The Three Sisters seem to have submitted wholly to the general bourgeoisifying trend, and the duel fought at the play's end, though fatal to one participant, is a travesty.)
Review, 2540 words
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