The Globe and Mail - September 7, 2007

"An existential, Chekhovian delight"
Kamal Al-Solaylee

Doom, gloom and other resident evils aside, Chekhov's Three Sisters is a play that nobody with reasonable intelligence, some emotional maturity and a few bucks to spare should go through life without experiencing at least once.

The story of three sisters (Olga, Masha and Irina) in a bleak, culture-forsaken garrison town who dream of life in Moscow but never get there, it asks audiences to ponder the very meaning of life. It begins with Olga reminiscing about her father's death and ends with a haunting cry: "If only we knew, if only we knew" why we live and why we suffer. In between, the sisters are literally driven out of their home and nearly out of their minds by forces of social degeneration - namely, Natasha, the crass woman their brother Andrei has married.

Even in a production as patchy as the one Soulpepper Theatre Company unveiled Wednesday, there's enough joyous heartbreak and philosophy to make three hours in the company of this Three Sisters a wise investment in the social capital of empathy and common humanity. Yes, I'm guilty as charged of having bought and swallowed the liberal humanism Kool-Aid.

Those who are already Chekhov-indoctrinated can sit back and watch - often in awe, sometimes in disbelief - the tricks director Laszlo Marton has pulled out this time. Marton doesn't disappoint but he doesn't thrill. His production displays his characteristic intelligence, conceptual innovation and Slavic penchant for physical entanglement. It's not a Marton night at the theatre until an actress pours a jug of water on herself (please note, a jug not a glass), or is kissed with an intensity bordering on the sadomasochistic. The trouble is that some company members can roughhouse it better than others.

Though not a play about generational conflict and crisis in the sense that Platonov is, this production of Three Sisters pits young and veteran actors against each other when, in theory, it means to bring them into the same fold. This new and generally unremarkable translation by Marton and young playwright Nicolas Billon is itself an intergenerational affair.

Most of the experienced names (Albert Schultz, Megan Follows, Diego Matamoros) soar, while newcomers (Sarah Wilson, Kevin MacDonald) fall flat and fall often. Given that Wilson plays Natasha, a woman described as "the most malevolent figure Chekhov ever created," I was tempted to think that by instructing her to play the role in such a broad fashion, Marton is deliberately introducing a destructive force into the production, just as the playwright has done to his characters.

But, heck, even I couldn't buy that one, and instead decided to concentrate on the production's highlights. Luckily, there are many of those.

Every scene that features Follows as Masha, Patricia Fagan as Irina and d'bi.young.anitafrika as Olga is theatrical bliss. They may not look like sisters, but they create an absorbing emotional and familial bond of shared hopes and heartbreaks. I liked the gravitas of d'bi.young.anitafrika as the eldest sister; the existential disappointment of Follows as the middle one, and the sweet floundering and eventual resignation of Fagan as the youngest.

Schultz has spent so much time in the creation of Soulpepper that his reputation as a deal-maker sometimes trumps his reputation as a powerful stage actor. His interpretation of Vershinin, the unhappily married man who begins an affair with the just-as-miserable Masha, is forceful, sweet and tender. It reminded me of his wonderful turn as Hamlet in 2005.

Three Sisters is, in fact, often referred to as Chekhov's Hamlet in terms of dramatic legacy. Yet, what the two plays have in common is an inexhaustible array of meanings and interpretations that will continue to serve actors, directors and audiences for centuries to come. Marton has just offered us a wild but uneven possibility. In more ways than one, we may have to settle for it until the next production comes along.

Source: The Globe and Mail

Now Magazine - September 13, 2007

"Uneven Sisters"
Jon Kaplan

Not everything works in the Soulpepper production of Three Sisters, engagingly adapted by Nicolas Billon and director László Marton , but there's lots of powerful feeling, as well as the laughter Chekhov finds in the human comedy.

The sibs of the title – schoolteacher Olga ( d'bi.young.anitafrika ), the bored, unhappy Masha ( Megan Follows ), who's married to the dull academic Kulygin ( Diego Matamoros ), and the innocent Irina ( Patricia Fagan ) – all yearn for something better, be it a return to Moscow or other excitement.

Masha finds it in the married Vershinin ( Albert Schultz ), a philosophical, charismatic officer posted to their small town; their brother Andrei ( Kevin MacDonald ) thinks he has it in Natasha ( Sarah Wilson ), the initially shy, later shrewish woman he weds.

Chekhov's plays chronicle the little points of people's lives and interactions, which, in fact, carry enormous emotional weight. After an opening scene suggestive of a family portrait come to life, Marton settles into a believable realism, with some nicely contrasted two-character episodes.

But not all the elements are successful, for the actors use various performance styles; the director doesn't give a unified feel to their work, so at times they seem to be in different plays. Also, the production's rhythms sometimes feel ragged.

Yet the highs are more frequent than the lows, especially in act two. Taking acting honours are Follows and Schultz as the secret lovers, staid in front of others and passionate when alone. Watch how she holds a pillow when she thinks of Vershinin.

Fagan's Irina grows from naíveté to exasperation and finally despondence. Stephen Guy-McGrath and Mike Ross play her quarrelling, competitive suitors; the latter is especially good at creating an ineffectual nobleman who's at home nowhere. Matamoros's unobservant teacher and Michael Simpson 's drunken, self-pitying doctor best catch the sometimes savage edge that connects the play's laughs and tears.

Source: Now Magazine

Toronto Magazine - September 10, 2007

"Three Sisters: The Best Production In Toronto This Year"
Robert Cushman

Chekhov's Three Sisters yearn to go to Moscow. It's the one thing about them and their play that everybody knows. The first huge virtue of Laszlo Marton's Soulpepper production is that it rescues this premise from being a theatrical joke and makes it both fresh and forceful.

Listening to the play's opening speeches, we register the facts and the feelings as never before. We take in just how long Olga, Masha and Irina have been living in their provincial fastness, and how their lives are still dominated by the memory of their father the general who brought them here. Marton has staged this prelude formally, the cast lined up in chairs against the back wall. We seem to be suspended in time; there are even distant echoes, musical and visual, of the general's funeral. The sisterhood's initial hopefulness rings out clear; so do the mundane rumblings of the people around them that will eventually swallow them up. Five minutes into the play, your heart is already breaking.

Suddenly, it's raining, and we're firmly in present time, the sisters virtually dancing in anticipation of Irina's name-day party. Another of the production's signal achievements is that it makes us believe in them as siblings; they have all the closeness and all the shared jokes. It's typical, both of them and of the production, that in the traumas of the third act, with the town on fire, they break out into a pillow fight. Olga, the reluctant headmistress and more reluctant spinster, is often played as a wraith-like figure from a different generation altogether; d'bi.young.anitafrika gives her the family passion and the family warmth; confronted with Masha's infidelity to her husband (another teacher) she's torn, visibly and agonizingly, between sympathy and disapproval. Megan Follows' Masha, all nerves and irony, disintegrates before our eyes as she first yields to, then loses, the married officer Vershinin. Patricia Fagan's Irina is a radiant study in hopefulness continually lowering its sights, forced to compromise in love and in life, and losing even what she's settled for. The complexities of feeling that percolate within and around this family are brilliantly captured. Nicolas Billon's English version is exceptionally lucid.

There is, as usual in Marton's Chekhov productions, a physicality that is both exciting in itself and a huge release for the actors, whether they're playing joy or -- more frequently -- desperation; sometimes it's joy to stave off desperation. When Michael Simpson's drunken doctor, in his great aria of self-disgust, his belly protruding over his long-johns, washes himself off, he practically drowns himself in the basin. (He also -- a signature Marton motif -- has an intense relationship with a chair.) A role that is often sentimentalized here takes on a new leering identity, a stubborn refusal to take anything seriously that melts for a brief moment when he shouts at Andrei, the sisters' even more hapless brother, to get out of town fast. Kevin Mac-Donald gets electric in Andrei's most intense sequence of self-flagellation. It's typical of Chekhov that this should immediately be followed by a shrewish outburst from his wife, Natasha, typical of Marton that she should deliver it from a window immediately above him.

The stage is small, but Lorenzo Savoini's brick-backed set, with the onstage candles atmospherically realized in Kevin Lamotte's lighting, makes the room seem large. Characters huddle in corners or against walls in a frantic search for intimacy: Irina fending off the hopeful attentions of Mike Ross's kindly bearded Baron or Andrei making his spectacularly ill-fated (because successful) proposal to Natasha.

Sarah Wilson plays Natasha's initial shyness and later cruelty to the max, with one hysterical uncomprehending outburst that combines them. Stephen Guy-McGrath's Soliony, the play's other destructive outsider, has a mad spasm that's even more frightening. In general, the company's newer younger actors are good at the emotional extremes, less so at imposing themselves in between. The most relaxed performances come from Soulpepper's two middle-aged statesmen: Diego Matamoros embodies all the embarrassment and irritation of Masha's cuckolded husband, continually arriving just too late to find his wife in some kind of flagrante. Equally well-meaning and equally ineffectual -- indeed the two supposed rivals spend a surprising amount of convivial time together --is Albert Schultz's Vershinin, drifting in and out of his affair without quite knowing what's hit him or, especially, her. His famous philosophizing is perfectly genuine -- he's Russian, after all; it's also a mask for guilt. The lovers' farewell is triumphantly tragicomic: she jumping into his arms; he trying to disengage himself while she clings frantically to his coat, as if that might hold him.

Even the smallest parts are well played; the two aged retainers (Dawn Greenhalgh and Les Carlson) better than well. The junior officers (James Dallas Smith, Michael Blake) are amiable spectators; even the silent maid (Jennifer Villaverde) has a validating moment of terror. Irony cuts through the play like a knife, but this isn't one of those Chekhov productions that falls over itself to be funny; I laughed only once. Rather, it banishes gloom by giving pain its full weight and putting it in personal and historical perspective. It's comic in the largest sense, and brimming with life. There have been some very fine productions in and around Toronto this year, but this one tops them all.

Source: National Post

Toronto Star - September 6, 2007

"Chekhov's Sisters Pushed to the Limit"
Robert Crew

Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters is one of a handful of great plays against which any ambitious theatre company is probably duty-bound to test itself.

Soulpepper's turn came last night at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, with the company's favourite foreign director, Hungarian Laszlo Marton, in charge of proceedings.

The result A production filled with intelligence, invention and colour that nevertheless falls a little short of greatness.

Chekhov's masterpiece is a study in opposites. The present is bleak and sterile, the future seems to look bright. Exile from Moscow equals gnawing discontent and an unfulfilled life; a return there would bring utopian perfection. Intellect struggles against emotion, control against passion.

Marton's production gives full weight to these contrasts as sisters Olga, Masha and Irina find ways to rebel against their humdrum life. Olga (d'bi.young.anitafrika) devotes herself to her teaching, Masha (Megan Follows) chooses an affair with a philosophizing army colonel (Albert Schultz) while Irina (Patrica Fagan) eventually decides to settle for a loveless marriage to the local baron (Mike Ross).

Meanwhile their brother Andrei (Kevin MacDonald) has miserably failed to live up to his early promise and has saddled himself with a horror of a wife called Natasha (Sarah Wilson).

Marton pushes the production further then any I have seen. The stage is peopled with eccentrics, actions are extreme and even violent. People kick furniture, throw water all over themselves and cling desperately to each other. Three Sisters contains elements of melodrama that Marton certainly doesn't shy away from.

One huge benefit is that you really get a strong sense of boiling emotions underlying a scene that may consist of someone blathering on about something inconsequential. The downside is that several members of the cast play the eccentricities to the hilt, at the expense of full, consistent characterization.

There's quite the range of accents and acting styles; Follows, for example is cool and classical, Fagan is contemporary and naturalistic, while d'bi.young.afrika, with a background in alternate theatre, has moments that seem over the top, particularly in such a setting.

Yet the three of them combine in the final scenes of the play to produce a climax that is pretty well as it should be - heart-wrenching and poignant.

The acting in some areas may be somewhat broad but it's hard not to enjoy Stephen Guy-McGrath's horribly anti-social Soliony, Wilson's studiously nasty Natasha and Mike Ross's giggly Tusenbach.

Perhaps the finest performances, however, come from Soulpepper founding members Schultz and Diego Matamoros. Schultz carries the intellectual weft of the play with charm and conviction, Matamoros brings dignity and honesty to the role of Kulygin, the slightly ridiculous schoolmaster who is unswerving in his love for wayward wife Masha.

Victoria Wallace's costumes seem to range over several time periods but Kevin Lamotte's lighting is discreetly effective. And Marton uses Lorenzo Savoini's sparsely furnished set to great dramatic effect.

It may not be Moscow, but there are certainly times when it comes close.

Source: Toronto Star

Toronto Sun - September 19, 2007

"Three Sisters Lost In Time"
John Coulbourn

Few great plays have a best-before date, but most of them do have a best-during date.

Case in point: Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters. It's a work so firmly anchored in the backwater of Czarist Russia that to set it in any other time and place makes no sense whatsoever, rendering as it does the ennui that grips the characters and squeezes the life from them almost laughable.

All of which means that director Laszlo Marton is fighting an uphill battle in his latest assault on the Chekhov canon in collaboration with Soulpepper, a production that opened earlier this month at the Young Centre.

That Marton succeeds as well as he does is testament not only to his directorial skills, but to the combined talents of a strong if uneven ensemble of players. But in the end, this is a qualified success at best.

Translated and adapted by Nicolas Billon, in concert with Marton, this is Three Sisters in search of an era, featuring costumes (by Victoria Wallace) that suggest the early part of the 20th century and dialogue that suggests the latter. This leaves an audience to wonder why, if everyone in the little backwater burg in which Chekhov has set his play is so damn bored, they don't simply turn on the radio or the television or, better yet, hop in one of the cars that people seem to covet (according to one of the characters) and drive to the promised land of Moscow, where everything is apparently just hunky-dory.

All of that sits at a pretty far remove from what Chekhov intended when he wrote this story of three sisters -- the responsible Olga (d'bi.young.anitafrika), the unhappy Masha (Megan Follows) and the dreaming Irina (Patricia Fagan) -- and their struggle to find happiness.

Stranded in an outpost of the Russian Empire by the death of their military father, the three sisters of title and their younger brother Andrei (Kevin MacDonald) are all discontented with their life, but in a society conditioned to servitude by centuries of autocracy, they lack the will to make the changes that will restore them to Moscow, the city of their dreams.

Instead, they sink into compromise, finding relief, if not happiness, in work, dreams, marriage or even extra-marital affairs.

It is, of course, a sprawling story, rooted in the familial but blossoming in a very Russian community that includes a drunken doctor (Michael Simpson), a philosophizing officer (Albert Schultz), a social-climbing peasant (Sarah Wilson), a lovestruck Baron (Mike Ross), a long-suffering husband (Diego Matamoros) and assorted servants and military hangers-on.

In telling the tale, Marton seems so eager to compile his "snapshot" of family life that he all but ignores time and place, offering up only occasional snippets of funereal Orthodox religious music and glimpses of samovars to anchor it in place, and virtually nothing to place it in time.

From a dramatic perspective, Marton favours a tightrope stretched taut between slapstick and melodrama and, while veteran performers such as Schultz and Matamoros (who actually seems to be enjoying his work here) are capable of the kind of deft dramatic footwork required to negotiate Marton's demands, the less experienced performers in the cast don't fare nearly so well. Their work is, at best, uneven, ranging from anitafrika's carefully constrained performance to Wilson's hysterics, with MacDonald, Ross and Stephen Guy-McGrath veering back and forth between the two extremes.

In the final analysis, Marton is working toward a vision, but thanks to an uneven cast and a less-than-perfect adaptation, it's hard to see just what that vision might be.

Source: Toronto Sun