Revisiting the Prozorovs

Abstract

So realistically did the first (1901) production of Three Sisters present the lives of Chekhov's characters that Russian audiences talked not of going to the theatre but instead of "paying a call on the Prozorovs." In the course of the year beginning February 1995 I twice visited the Prozorovs, and, in addition, paid a call on their late-twentieth-century counterparts. On the occasion of one revisiting (Max Stafford-Clark's Out of Joint production of Three Sisters) I found the Prozorovs still at their old address, but, on the other (Scarlet Theatre's The Sisters), there had been a change in their circumstances. Adapted from Chekhov's play by the Polish writer Andrzej Sadowski and directed by his compatriot Katarzyna Deszcz, The Sisters transformed the Prozorovs' home into a grey square on the stage floor, furnished with a table, a large movable french window, and three narrow, straight-backed chairs. Overhead was a low, oppressive ceiling and four dangling lights in large cone-shaped shades. The cast list had also been drastically reduced: all the male characters were cut, leaving only the sisters, Olga, Masha, and Irena, their sister-in-law, Natasha, and the old nurse, Anfisa.