Sister act has that soap feel

Three sisters, Lowry, Salford

THE title sounds like something a soap opera might use and this lively touring production of the great Chekhov work doesn’t stop far short of having the same sort of feel.

In the 150th anniversary year of the playwright’s birth, several directors have suggested it’s time Chekhov was treated like Shakespeare: emotional truths acknowledged, period details derailed.

Too often these plays are set in their turn-of-the-century late Victorian-faded gentility, but Lyric Hammersmith artistic director Sean Holmes and the Filter theatre company have assembled a strong cast, stuck them in both period and timeless costumes, given them Doc Marten boots, T-shirts and baby buggies and made them modern people again, with accents ranging from the Newcastle of Paul Woodson’s Fedotik to the Irish of Clare Dunne’s appealing Irina.

The result is to dispense with the so-called Chekhovian ideal of producing bitter laughter through human hopelessness and loss, instead allowing the characters play the language and seeing where it takes us.

The first hour thus has a rare quality and clarity, in which it is very clear that this is a family heading for implosion; eldest sister Olga (Poppy Miller) is stuck in a job that tires her out; middle sister Masha (Romola Garai) is stuck in a marriage to a genuinely good man that nonetheless bores her silly, while youngest daughter Irina is patiently waiting to find the man of her dreams in Moscow.

Chekhov’s characters are a complex bunch: Masha’s lover Vershinin (John Lightbody) is desperate and lonely yet eloquent and excited; the girls’ brother Andrei (Ferdy Roberts) is trying to be adult while feeling childish and the family’s clutch of hangers-on and relatives is similarly distracted by personal issues.

The production doesn’t always work: after that hour of clarity in act one comes a weird, pre-interval 15 minutes when the play just loses focus and impetus, only to pick it up again after the interval.

But all things considered, if this lively, down-to-earth, sisters-at-odds drama is capable of being turned out of what is often seen as dryly-revered text, let’s have more of it.