Singing the Moscow Blues

By T.E. Kalem

THE THREE SISTERS by ANTON CHEKHOV

Chekhov is the poet laureate of the commonplace. He once wrote that "on the stage everything should be as complex and as simple as in life. People are having dinner, and while they're having it, their future happiness may be decided or their lives may be shattered." In presenting vivid, selective glimpses of ordinary life, Chekhov simultaneously plumbs the nature of existence with its brevity, hope, joy and sorrow. He is an impressionist rather than a photographer. In his plays we know that virtually nothing has happened, but we feel that much has been said.

Certainly nothing much happens in the Russian provincial military outpost where the three sisters are exiled psychologically as well as physically from their dear beloved Moscow. Boredom, drunkenness, mean gossip and despair are the town's leading resources, and the sisters drown in anguish.

They try to exorcise loneliness by seeking some point or purpose in their lives. Olga (Rosemary Harris) idealistically teaches school but dreams of a home and family. Miserable in her marriage to a pedantic schoolmaster (Rex Robbins), Masha (Ellen Burstyn) stumbles into a hopeless, heart-wrenching affair with the garrison's Lieut. Colonel Vershinin (Denholm Elliott). The youngest sister, Irina (Tovah Feldshuh), seeks to be ennobled by the "dignity of work" in the local telegraph office.

Olga and Masha urge Irina to accept a proposal of marriage from an oddly self-mocking anti-hero named Baron Tusenbach (Austin Pendleton). Though Irina does not love him, she does deeply respect him and reluctantly agrees. But Irina is besieged by another suitor, a man as menacing as a bayonet thrust, Staff Captain Solyony (Rene Au-berjonois), who is romantically desperate for her love. Solyony challenges the baron to a duel, and all dreams end with a pistol shot.

Following this exemplary production, the Brooklyn Academy of Music Theater Company ought to be held to gether as a permanent repertory troupe. It consists of players whose passion is the theater and who possess talents of the highest distinction. Rosemary Harris could mesmerize an audience by reciting the multiplication table. Tovah Feldshuh is a steel butterfly, a young actress of electrifying presence and promise. As Masha, Ellen Burstyn lacks some consuming sensual hunger, but her parting embrace with Vershinin is a silent, agonized howl of lost love.

The astonishingly versatile English director Frank Dunlop has maintained an admirably sane balance between the ironic lightness of Chekhov's comedy and the Stygian strain of his pathos. For the subtlest of comic relief, Dunlop could not have wished for anything better than that provided by Barnard Hughes as a compassionate, sodden and cheerily nihilistic regimental doctor. In serving Chekhov with unswerving fidelity, BAM adds another medal of honor to its growing collection.

T.E. Kalem

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