Three Sisters
At the ART, and very well worth seeing, is an arduous but fascinating production of Three Sisters, directed by Krystian Lupa. This is 1901 Chekhov informed by Brecht and Beckett; it makes you wonder what dinner with Checkov and Mamet might be like.
No one in the house means what they say: at least, what they say has little to do with the words they speak. They have nothing to say to each other, and they speak elliptically and at cross purposes when they can speak at all.
The cost of this approach -- at least on the blizzard-night performance we attended -- is that the play runs very, very long. It's not an energetic evening; in this production, pacing is irrelevant. Thoughtful, intriguing, a performance to be savored for years.
