Three Sisters (play)

Olga Sergeyevna Prozorova (Olga) – The eldest of the three sisters, she is the matriarchal figure of the Prozorov family, though at the beginning of the play she is only 28 years old. Olga is a teacher at the high school, where she frequently fills in for the headmistress whenever the latter is absent. Olga is a spinster and at one point tells Irina that she would have married "any man, even an old man if he had asked" her. Olga is very motherly even to the elderly servants, keeping on the elderly nurse/retainer Anfisa, long after she has ceased to be useful. When Olga reluctantly takes the role of headmistress permanently, she takes Anfisa with her to escape the clutches of the heartless Natasha.

Maria Sergeyevna Kulygina (Masha) – The middle sister, she is 23 at the beginning of the play. She married her husband, Kulygin, when she was 18 and just out of school. When the play opens she has been disappointed in the marriage and falls completely in love with the idealistic Lieutenant-Colonel Vershinin. They begin a clandestine affair. When he is transferred away, she is crushed, but returns to life with her husband, who accepts her back despite knowing what she has done. She has a short temper, which is seen frequently throughout the play, and is the sister who disapproves the most of Natasha. Onstage, her directness often serves as a tonic to the melodrama, and her ironic wit comes across as heroic She provides much of the humour. She was trained as a concert pianist.

Irina Sergeyevna Prozorova – The youngest sister, she is 20 at the beginning of the play. It is her "" at the beginning of the play and though she insists she is grown-up she is still enchanted by things such as a spinning top brought to her by Fedotik. Her only desire is to go back to Moscow, which they left eleven years before the play begins. She believes she will find her true love in Moscow, but when it becomes clear that they are not going to Moscow, she agrees to marry the Baron Tuzenbach, whom she admires but does not love. She gets her teaching degree and plans to leave with the Baron, but he is shot and killed by the psychopath Solyony in a pointless duel. She decides to leave anyway and dedicate her life to work and service.

name day

Andrei Sergeyevich Prozorov (Andrey) – The brother of the three sisters. In Act I, he is a young man on the fast track to becoming a faculty professor in Moscow. However, his inertia, weak-willed indecisiveness, and poor judgment (all of which will become apparent throughout the play) put paid to those dreams. In Act II, he still longs for his old days as a bachelor dreaming of life in Moscow, but is now, due to his fatefully ill-conceived wedding to Natasha, stuck in a provincial town with a baby and a job as secretary to the . In Act III, his debts have grown to 35,000 rubles and he is forced to mortgage the house, but does not tell his sisters or give them any shares in the family home. Act IV finds Andrei a pathetic shell of his former self, now the father of two (although he may not be the biological father of the younger child). He acknowledges he is a failure and laughed at in town for being a member of the village council whose president, Protopopov (never seen onstage), is cuckolding him.

County Council

Natalia Ivanovna Prozorov (Natasha) – Andrei's , later his wife. She begins the play as an awkward young woman who dresses poorly and is ridiculed and teased by Andrei's sisters. Much fun is made of her ill-becoming green sash and she bursts into tears. She apparently has no family of her own, although not known to be an orphan (a signal that she cares for no one but herself) and the reader never learns her maiden name. She agrees to marry Andrei despite seemingly being surprised by the proposal. Act II finds a very different Natasha. She has grown bossy and flagrantly carries on an affair with Protopopov, the president of the council on which her husband sits bureaucratic superior, and who may well be the biological father of her younger child, especially since she has bustled Andrei out of their bedroom into more modest quarters. In Act III, she has become even more controlling. She is determined, among other things, to expel the sisters' now elderly former family retainer, Anfisa, who is no longer fit for hard work, and still throws temper tantrums whenever she doesn't get her way, an increasingly rare event. Act IV finds that she has control of the house, and, as the châtelaine, is planning to radically change the grounds to her liking. Inarguably, she is the victor by the end of the play — caring for no one besides her own children, Bobik and Sofia, upon whom she dotes. The only woman in the play with children, she rules the Prozorov's now mortgaged (to pay for her husband's debts and her expensive tastes) former family home with an iron fist. She orders the trees on the property be cut down because they are ugly at night.

love interest

Fyodor Ilyich Kulygin – Masha's older husband and the Latin teacher at the high school. Kulygin is a jovial, kindly man, who truly loves his wife, and her sisters, although he is very much aware of her infidelity. In the first act he seems almost foolish, giving Irina a gift he has already given her, and joking around with the doctor to make fun of Natasha, but begins to grow more and more sympathetic as Masha's affair progresses. During the fire in Act 3, he confesses to Olga that he might have married her – the fact that the two would probably be very happy together is hinted at many times during the play. Throughout the play, often at the most serious moments, he often tries to make the other characters laugh in order to relieve tension, and while that doesn't always work, he is able to give his wife comfort through humour in her darkest hour at the climax of the play. At the end of the play, although knowing what Masha has done, he takes her back and accepts her failings.

's 1936–37 landmark season at the Queen's Theatre included a well-received production with Peggy Ashcroft as Irina and Michael Redgrave as Tusenbach.

John Gielgud

In 1942, portrayed Olga, Katharine Cornell portrayed Masha, Gertrude Musgrove portrayed Irina, and Ruth Gordon portrayed Natasha on Broadway. The production was significant enough to land the cast on the cover of Time on 21 December 1942, which proclaimed it "a dream production by anybody's reckoning – the most glittering cast the theatre has seen, commercially, in this generation".^[16]

Judith Anderson

The of the Guthrie Theater included a production with Jessica Tandy as Olga.

1963 inaugural season

There is a filmed record of a mid-1960s production by The Actors Studio with and Geraldine Page as Masha and Olga, respectively, supported by Sandy Dennis's Irina and Shelley Winters as Natasha.

Kim Stanley

in 1970 filmed a version with a witty Masha from Joan Plowright opposite Alan Bates as Vershinin, with Ronald Pickup as Tusenbach and Laurence Olivier, who co-directed, playing Chebutykin. The film was based on a theatre production that Olivier directed at the National Theatre in 1967.

American Film Theatre

Ellen Burstyn and Tovah Feldshuh played, respectively, Olga, Masha and Irina at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the 1970s with René Auberjonois as Solyony.

Rosemary Harris

A 1982 production at , had Dianne Wiest as Masha, Lisa Banes as Olga, Mia Dillon as Irina, Christine Ebersole as Natasha, Sam Waterston as Vershinin, Jeff Daniels as Andrei, Bob Balaban as Tusenbach, and Jack Gilford as Chebutykin.

Manhattan Theatre Club

Chicago's put one together under the direction of Austin Pendleton, with Molly Regan as Olga, Joan Allen as Masha, Rondi Reed as Natasha, and Kevin Anderson as Solyony.

Steppenwolf Theatre Company

In 1985 directed a production at the Royal Exchange, Manchester with Cheryl Prime as Natasha, Emma Piper as Olga, Janet McTeer as Masha, Niamh Cusack as Irina and Espen Skjonberg as Dr Chebutykin.

Casper Wrede

The Roundabout Theatre in New York had as Chebutykin, Billy Crudup as Solyony, Eric Stoltz as Tuzenbach, Lili Taylor as Irina, Paul Giamatti as Andrei, Amy Irving as Olga, Jeanne Tripplehorn as Masha, Calista Flockhart as Natasha, and David Strathairn as Vershinin.

Jerry Stiller

In 1990, the Irish theatrical dynasty, the Cusacks, were cast in the play, in a new version by , which opened at the Gate Theatre in Dublin with the three award-winning sisters Sinéad Cusack (Masha), Sorcha Cusack (Olga) and Niamh Cusack (Irina) in the title rôles and their father Cyril Cusack as Dr. Chebutykin.^[17] This is the only production ever to cast three 'real' sisters, professional actors in their own right, in the title rôles. The production, which was directed by the then newly appointed Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Adrian Noble, transferred to London's Royal Court Theatre for a sell-out season in 1991. Amongst the supporting cast were Lesley Manville as Natasha and Finbar Lynch as Tusenbach.

Frank McGuinness

In 1991, sisters (Olga) and Lynn Redgrave (Masha) made their first and only appearance together onstage in this, with niece Jemma Redgrave as Irina at the Queen's Theatre, London.

Vanessa Redgrave

In 1999, The Thrie Sisters, a translation into by David Purves was produced by Theatre Alba at Lauriston Halls on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.^[18]

Scots

In 2003, Romanian director Radu Afrim adapted the play in a controversial production at the Andrei Mureşanu theatre in , highly criticized by Michael Billington, but praised by other critics, leading to a local controversy in the Romanian press which would catapult Afrim to national superstardom in Romanian theatre.^{[19][20][21][22]}

Sfantu-Gheorghe

The play was produced in 2010 at the by Filter with a cast including Poppy Miller, Romola Garai and Clare Dunne.^[23]

Lyric Hammersmith

In 2010, the play was adapted by for , Prague as Tři sestry. The sisters played Andrea Černá, Zuzana Vejvodová and Martina Randová and other actors were Otakar Brousek ml. as Vershinin, Tomáš Töpfer as Doctor Chebutykin

Theatre Na Fidlovačce

In 2012, the play was staged at the , directed by Benedict Andrews in his own new version. The cast included Vanessa Kirby, Mariah Gale and Sam Troughton.

Young Vic

In 2014, the play was staged at the , directed by Russell Bolam. The cast included Olivia Hallinan, Holliday Grainger and Paul McGann.

Southwark Playhouse

In 2017, the play was staged at the Studio Theatre directed by Jackson Gay in conjunction with a modern adaption called No Sisters directed by Aaron Posner.

[24]

In 2017, the play was staged by at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House from 6 November — 16 December. The new adaptation was by Andrew Upton and the cast included Alison Bell as Olga, Miranda Daughtry as Irina and Harry Greenwood as Tusenbach.^[25]

Sydney Theatre Company

In 2019, the play was staged at Theatre in London, with Alan Williams playing Ivan Romanovich Chebutykin.

the Almeida

Three Sisters has been adapted into a full-length by Hungarian composer Péter Eötvös and Claus H. Henneberg, as Tri sestry (Three Sisters). It was premiered at the Opéra National de Lyon in 1998, directed by Ushio Amagatsu, and conducted by Kent Nagano and the composer.

opera

, a 2008 British play co-written by Diane Samuels and Tracy Ann Oberman, reinterprets Chekhov's play by transferring events to Liverpool after World War II and re-casting the Pozorov sisters as three Jewish Englishwomen. It opened at the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool on 25 January 2008 before beginning a second run at the Hampstead Theatre in London.^[26]

Three Sisters on Hope Street

In 2011, the play was adapted by for Northern Broadsides as We Are Three Sisters, drawing out parallels with the lives of the Brontë sisters.^[27]

Blake Morrison

Track 3, a 2013 adaptation of the play created by Theatre Movement Bazaar co-founders, Tina Kronis and Richard Alger. It premiered in Los Angeles and has played in the UK, China, and in 2017 was the first US production in over 25 years to play in the Chekhov International Theatre Festival in Moscow.

In 2014, an adaptation by , set in Dunoon, Scotland, in the middle of the 20th Century, was produced by the Tron Theatre Company, Glasgow.^[28]

John Byrne

Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow, a stage adaptation by that approaches the story through a contemporary lens, originally premiering in 2017.^[29][30]

Halley Feiffer

In 2020, an adaptation by , set in Owerri, Nigeria during the Nigerian Civil War between 1967 and 1970, was staged at the Lyttelton Theatre in London.

Inua Ellams

at Standard Ebooks

Three Sisters

at the Internet Broadway Database

​Three Sisters​

an English translation of Three Sisters

Oxquarry Books

English translations of several Chekhov plays, including Three Sisters

Project Gutenberg

(in Russian)

Full text of Three Sisters

public domain audiobook at LibriVox

The Three Sisters

Three Sisters from Czech theatre 'Divadlo na Fidlovačce', Prague