That visiting production inspired then-Festival Theatre Artistic Director Carol Rocamora to embark on her own cycle of translations of Chekhov's four major plays under her own direction. The cycle comes to a close with the current Three Sisters . This Three Sisters , clocking in at over three hours, is anything but swift, which is as it should be. Brand new marriages sour. Existing marriages veer into adultery in the desperate attempt to snatch at happiness.
Young people resign themselves to marrying without love.
And, needless to say, none of the three Prozorov sisters nor their brother Andrei ever escape the provincial garrison town and get to Moscow, the lodestar of their aspirations and locus of their desperations. Rocamora's production begins, appropriately, with characters upbeat and exuberant. Wilder's hopeful face has grown empty, an untrustworthy mask. This Masha is beginning to end, smoldering with anger, which surfaces in petty outbursts early on and in grand displays of malice later. Some of the men fare less well in Rocamora's production.