Three Sisters – Checkov In Queens
by Lina Zeldovich on March 22, 2011
Three Sisters, Olga, Masha and Irina lead a quiet but not content life in a small garrison town of Russia, much longing for Moscow they had left elven years ago. The oldest, Olga, is only twenty-eight, yet she is already considered an old spinster; at some point admits that she would marry “any man, even an old man if he had asked.” Masha, having been wed to a kind-hearted but much older high school teacher Kulygin, is very obviously unhappy with her life. Irina is twenty, beautiful, cheerful and wooed by Baron, an army lieutenant prone to political philosophizing, Solony, an army captain who incessantly tries to put Baron down to make himself look better, and Fedotik, a sub-lieutenant and an amateur photographer. The three sisters have a highly educated and promising brother Andrei, who with his level of education could have been a professor in Moscow, but instead marries a seemingly gentle vulnerable Natalya, who turns into a shrew. The Moscow nostalgia is an ever-present and almost palpable entity like Russian snow in winters – everyone believes that if they could only return to Moscow, life would be so different. They may be right, although we never find out what exactly is holding them up.
