Invictus Theatre Company’s “Three Sisters,” 2024, with Katherine Schwartz (Másha Prózorov), Ellie Duffey (Irína Prózorov), Maria Stephens (Ólga Prózorov)/Photo: Aaron Reese Boseman
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In 1900, when Anton Chekhov read the just-written script of “Three Sisters” to the actors and producers of the Moscow Art Theatre—the company founded by Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, which introduced to the world both Chekhov’s work and the internalized, naturalistic style of acting now known as the Method—they were underwhelmed. To the Art Theatre members, who already triumphantly staged the playwright’s “The Seagull” and “Uncle Vanya,” the new work seemed to lack not only juicy parts, but also a consistent tone and a graspable theme. As a modern critic has commented, the play “has the air of seeming to make, yet never quite making, some statement about human life.” What’s more, it’s downbeat, even by Slavic standards. In a letter, Chekhov himself described the play as “dreary, long and awkward” with “a spirit more gloomy than gloom itself.”
Indeed, Chekhov’s tragicomic anti-drama, which uses the medium of theater to attack the idea that life is in any way like the carefully structured stories we typically see on stage, is all about not-quiteness. “Three Sisters” has its farcical moments, but is not quite a comedy. And it contains sad and melodramatic elements—unrequited love, transgressive romance, a vicious family interloper, even a duel—but it has neither the fateful intensity of tragedy nor the contrived, black-and-white moralism of nineteenth-century sentimental drama. What the play richly offers—and what Invictus’ mostly well-conceived and well-executed production delivers—is the unadulterated, full-blast humanity of its characters, as they struggle and suffer through lives that lack beauty and grandeur. Yet they are in their own way heroic, enduring the daily grind of a far-from-perfect world whose only virtue is that it is real and shows us who we truly are, rather than who we would like to be.
Invictus Theatre Company’s “Three Sisters,” 2024, with Ellie Duffey (Irína Prózorov) and Joseph Beal (Chebutýkin)/Photo: Aaron Reese Boseman
The show I saw began unsteadily, with a musical number sung by two performers who are neither quite in tune nor quite in character, followed by a long, mood-breaking announcement by director (and Invictus’ artistic director) Charles Askenaizer. When the actors finally appeared, they showed evidence of first-night nerves, with the exchanges too fast and too loud, and with a couple of miscues to boot. But after the first scene, the performances became smoother and deeper. Director Askenaizer has skillfully melded the actors into a rock-solid ensemble, making the community itself—a small Russian garrison town—a kind of character.
It’s a humble place, very far from the culture and urbanity of Moscow, where the play’s title sisters—spinsterish Ólga, unhappily married Másha, and young, fancy-free Irína—were born and desperately long to return. But “Three Sisters” is not the sort of story where dreams come true. Written less than twenty years before the Russian Revolution, it’s a portrait of a tired and decaying world where dreams are perpetually deferred, painful compromises are made and more effort is put into rationalizing misery than alleviating it.
This is a long show, three hours including intermission, and with little in the way of onstage action, it doesn’t exactly whoosh by. But then again, neither does life in the provincial outpost where the plot, such as it is, takes place.
Invictus Theatre Company’s “Three Sisters,” 2024, with Cat Hermes (Natásha) and Michael B. Woods (Andrey Prózorov)/Photo: Aaron Reese Boseman
The central figures are the cultured and genteel Prózorov sisters, already mentioned, who were educated “with a vengeance” by their recently deceased army-officer father. There’s also their intellectual, violin-playing brother, Andrey, who once had dreams of becoming a scientist or professor, but now contents himself, or pretends to, by serving on the local council, the chairman of which is his wife’s lover, a fact he may or may not be aware of.
Boredom, a chafing discontent and heartbreak are the stuff of life in this rustic hellhole, made bearable by heavy drinking and adulterous intrigues. The play’s liveliest scenes are the dinner parties at the lavish Prózorov estate, attended by army officers, most of whom are in love with the fetching Irína. Other guests include an aging, drunken army doctor who pined after the Prózorovs’ late mother and the fatuous headmaster of the local high school, now married to the much younger Másha, who at this point openly despises him. Their alcohol-fueled gatherings are raucous and uninhibited in the Russian manner, leading one to wonder: if this is the town’s upper crust, what are the parties like in the less-respectable neighborhoods?
Things, mostly bad, happen over the show’s four acts and approximately three years: a sour marriage and unpromising engagement are made, babies are born (awful ones, if they take after their parents), a passionate but pointless love affair flares up and flames out, frustrated employees get promoted or move on to an equally soul-killing job. But nothing really changes over the course of the play, which is constructed as a giant anticlimax, because real life has no climaxes and no neat endings, happy or otherwise.
Invictus Theatre Company’s “Three Sisters,” 2024, with Ellie Duffey (Irína Prózorov) and Colton Smith (Fedótik)/Photo: Aaron Reese Boseman
The sense of boredom in the play is so potent and palpable—it goes beyond realism and foreshadows the much later Theater of the Absurd—as the characters confront the tedium and futility of their existence and look for ways to kill whatever time they have left. Happiness is always elsewhere: for the Prózorov sisters, it’s in Moscow, which they seem to have confused with the Garden of Eden. For their brother Andrey and their Mr. Magoo-like stepbrother Kulýgin, the schoolmaster, it’s in staunch denial of their marital woes. For Baron Túzenbach, a lieutenant in the army, it’s in the ideal of work, a notion that could be entertained only by someone who has never had to work for a living, and for his commanding officer Vershínin, it’s in a reassuring fairy-tale view of a golden future that will come of itself. For the clownish and alcoholic doctor Chebutýkin, it’s in a universal apathy and cynicism.
All of this bleakness and drabness must be served with a dose of irony and a light, quick touch, lest the audience go down with the characters. Somehow director Askenaizer and company manage to do just that, helped along by Paul Schmidt’s crystal-clear, conversational translation. Askenaizer has cast the show very well indeed, and that is three-quarters of the job. There are no weak links in the sixteen-person cast, which takes on roles that represent the spectrum of humanity. All the major characters are distinct and rounded, yet all are plagued by the same dim sense of disappointment.
The three sisters shine: Maria Stephens gives the unmarried and uncourted Ólga a poignant, wistful dignity; Katherine Schwartz transforms herself magically from a dour, unhappy wife in Act I to glowing lover in Act II; and the radiant Ellie Duffey exudes both youthful charm and adolescent self-pity as spoiled Irína, who can accept love but not give it. As brother Andrey, the weak-willed dilettante who gambles away the family’s fortune, Michael B. Woods delivers a lesson in how to create a character not with voice but with posture, expression and especially eyes, which convey his anguished self-loathing more clearly than any soliloquy could. Cat Hermes steals the show as the air-kissing, French-mangling sister-in-law Natásha, a woman so ruthless, vindictive and generally toxic that one wishes somebody would brain her with a samovar. But this being Chekhov, even Natásha is humanized. We see things from her perspective, as a person who is constantly reminded that she has married up into a gated social milieu that she can inhabit but never fully belong to.
Invictus Theatre Company’s “Three Sisters,” 2024, with Bryan Breau (Vershínin), Cat Hermes (Natásha), Joseph Beal (Chebutýkin), Michael B. Woods (Andrey Prózorov), Maria Stephens (Ólga Prózorov), Ellie Duffey (Irína Prózorov), Katherine Schwartz (Másha Prózorov), Francis Brady (Kulýgin), Renae Stone (Anfísa), Charlie Diaz (Baron Túzenbach), John Wehrman (Solyóny), Brandon Boler (Róhde). [Kneeling in foreground]: Colton Smith (Fedótik)/Photo: Aaron Reese Boseman
Jessie Gowens costumes all and sundry in eye-pleasing and convincing period garb, and scenic designer Kevin Rolfs makes fine use of the Windy City Playhouse’s wide stage, which allows for different dramatic spaces within a single set. Props designer Rachel Livingston deserves, well, props for her columns painted to resemble Russian birches and even more so her increasingly moss-covered furniture, which makes a subtle visual statement about the social stagnation that is the play’s insistent subtext.
For a smallish storefront theater like Invictus to do so well by a play as expansive and demanding as “Three Sisters” is no mean feat, and I wish the show a long and happy run. With TikTok taking over the internet, the movies mostly comic books these days and TV (with some notable exceptions) continuing its age-old campaign to make morons of us all, live theater is just about the only respite from a culture at least as stultifying as the one the Prózorov family is trying and failing to cope with. For all their helplessness and moral and physical exhaustion, at least Chekhov’s personages are aware of their inner emptiness and are seeking some relief, some solace, however spurious. They’re like the theater itself, which doesn’t always offer answers but at its best, as here, wakes us to the deeper questions pressing in upon us. The despair expressed so eloquently and perceptively by these defeated people contains a note of hope for the audience. Ah, Moscow. Ah, us.
Invictus Theatre Company presents “Three Sisters” through July 14 at Windy City Playhouse, 3014 West Irving Park. Showtimes are Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays, 7pm; Saturdays and Sundays, 2pm; additional performance on Wednesday, July 3, 7pm. Tickets are $35 ($25 on Mondays) and are available at invictustheatreco.com.
