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Sunday Times review of 'The Three Sisters'
Birmingham Repertory Theatre - November 1998 Coming from Bill Bryden, this production seems oddly remote at first. It is hard to pin this down: it is as if the characters were not fully aware of each other, missing that constant crisscrossing and echoing of thoughts and feelings that is Chekhov's hallmark. Partly, this has to do with having to play an intimate text on a huge stage and to an auditorium with notoriously difficult acoustics. But, alas, it is also the speaking of that text: the actors often sound indistinct, especially the younger ones. The broodiness of Masha (Felicity Dean) is missing at first, and the effort to be audible makes Susan Wooldridge's Olga a little stagey. The syrupy entr'acte music is ghastly. Then, in the second half, the work comes to irresistible life. The sisters feel like people who grew up together, and Rachel Pickup's Irina begins to glow, serious and wistful. I liked Jason Britton's pale, surly Solyony and Alan Cox's eager, slightly dreamy Tusenbach. Charles Dance is a warm and touching Vershinin: a handsome, grizzled, slightly battered-looking man who doesn't quite realise how attractive he is. But perhaps the most completely achieved performance comes from Russell Hunter as the Doctor, cunningly controlled in his drunk scene, and full of the embittered, phlegmatic wisdom of the truly useless. © Peters for the SUNDAY TIMES |