“Home Stretch”: I guess I believe in both of those words when in rehearsal now for THREE SISTERS.
Our third play by Anton Chekhov opens May 8th, closes May 16th—less than a month away!—and brings to an end the inaugural season of The Classics Company. What started as an idea a year and a half ago has not only become reality but also a staple in the Rochester theatre ecology. It’s been a wondrous time. HomeThis is the most “domestic” of the Chekhov plays this season in several ways. The Prozorov house in a provincial town was supposed to be a temporary location for the sisters’ father, a General in the Russian military. However, the play opens a year after his death and eleven years since the family moved from Moscow. Their mother died a long time ago, so as they aged the sisters had to run the household and protect their academic and aloof brother, Andrei. The oldest sister, Olga, has taken on matriarchal duties. The middle sister, Masha, has married a schoolteacher at a young age but clearly spends much time at her family home. And the youngest, Irina, daydreams most of the day of when she and Olga will return to Moscow and she’ll find true love. In other words, though they’ve lived in this home for over a decade and have made a life there, they will forever be tied to their idealized home: the sophisticated city of Moscow. The dramatic action of the play includes Irina’s Name Day (think Birthday) luncheon for twelve, atmospheric musical underscoring both onstage and off, “Kodak moments” captured by camera, an all-night gathering in a sisters’ shared bedroom, and, eventually, a series of goodbyes outside the front door as the soldiers leave town. All this is lived out over a span of four years at the Prozorov home, including the birth of two children to Andrei’s new wife.
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