Three Sisters

National Theatre. Translated by Moura Budberg. Costumes by Beatrice Dawson.

Producer’s Note:

Quite late in rehearsal I found something I had scrawled on the flyleaf of my script one night during the pre-rehearsal preparation time. As you will surmise, it was late at night:

‘In Chekhov we are all stars:
but not selfish, glistening on our own.
We are flocks of bright angels,
all glorifying our sun – Chekhov.’

It was perhaps after all a little too late at night. At all events this splendid sentiment somehow never got itself recited to the company.

It is only worth recording as an instance of the sort of slavish discipleship that this master evokes in his interpretive craftsmen. Once you are brought to the faith, his godhead is pretty well beyond resistance or criticism and his grip on the heart is as hoops of steel. Though no plays of his can be said to be easy to produce, his intentions, rhythms and scoring are clear to the susceptible initiate. Once his intentions are perceived, he is subject to (and indeed he would seem to delight in) a wide variety of interpretations, always excepting the ponderous. We remember how he insists that all his work be regarded as comedies – Uncle Vanya he himself describes as ‘a farce’. One may detect a slight note of self-depreciation in this, but one must take the hint boldly enough to ensure that what is serious must filter through a delicate lens composed of a tender awareness of human frailties and absurdities.

To the wise gods our most tragic contortions can only be pathetic, if not laughable, and to Chekhov the least desirable of human attitudes is the Earnest. Strindberg had a remarkable appreciation of the Tragedy-Comedy equation; Chekhov’s understanding of it was more refined.

I am given to believe that for him the ultra-realism of the Stanislavski approach was not refined enough. Once, when he was discussing some of the naturalistic touches Stanislavski had introduced into The Seagull, he said: ‘Realistic? But the stage is art. Kramskoy has a picture on which the faces are painted beautifully. What would happen if one cut out the nose of one of the faces and substituted a real one for it? The nose would be realistic, but the picture would be ruined.’

– Laurence Olivier

Cast & Crew

Cast

Observations

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