Backstage - February 20, 1998
Three Sisters (Cannon Theater Company)
reviewed by David Sheward
The video image of a beautiful lady in her 60's is projected on a huge, white sheet. In front of the image stands a much younger woman in the same costume. Simultaneously, we see the hopeful girl and the regretful woman she becomes. This arresting stage picture is the visual and emotional high point of the Cannon Theater Compamny's production of Chekov's "Three Sisters." But director Richard Kimmel clutters it up with other actors moving scenery around.
This is emblematic of the entire evening - a few lovely moments obscured by over-direction and over-acting. The great trap of this play about people bored with their lives is to play it boringly. Kimmel and company go too far in the other direction, so that instead of a household of lonely souls, we get a circus full of zanies. Olga (Nitza Wilon) is a nag; Masha (Rachel Fowler), a shrew; Irina (Cynthia Boorujy), a whiner; and the vulgar sister-in-law, Natasha (Holly Natwora ), is such an exaggerated clown, she seems to be doing a Carol Burnett impersonation. Jonathan Davis as Tuzenbach, Irina's hapless suitor, stands out as a genuine person simply by underplaying.
Kimmel has added the device of framing each act with video scenes (cinematography by Joe Foley) depicting the titular siblings as old immigrants in Brighton Beach, speaking the lines of the play in the original Russian. Ironically, Barbara Colton , Nina Savinski-Moston , and Elena Solovei are so real, relaxed and natural as the video sisters that they make their over-palying, flesh-and-blood counterparts appear all the more artificial by contrast. Compliments to Olga Maslova's authentic costumes.