Three Sisters (NHB Classic Plays)
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
In a room in a house in a provincial town, three sisters wait for their lives to begin. Olga, the eldest. Masha, the middle child. Irina, the youngest.
The clock strikes. A candle is lit. The clock stops. Something catches fire. The clock strikes. They wake up.
Cordelia Lynn's new version of Chekhov's Three Sisters was first performed at the Almeida Theatre, London, in April 2019, in a production directed by Rebecca Frecknall.
Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, in southern Russia, and in his youth paid for his own education and supported his entire family by writing short, satirical sketches of Russian life. Though he eventually became a physician and once considered medicine his principal career, he continued to gain popularity and praise as a writer for various Russian newspapers, eventually authoring more literary work and ultimately his most well-known plays, including Ivanov, The Seagull, and Uncle Vanya. He died of tuberculosis in 1904, and is regarded as one of the best short story writers in history, influencing such authors as Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, and Raymond Carver.
Read more from Anton Chekhov
The Lady with the Dog: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Very Russian Christmas: The Greatest Russian Holiday Stories of All Time Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Seagull Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Plays of Anton Chekhov Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Christmas Library: 250+ Essential Christmas Novels, Poems, Carols, Short Stories...by 100+ Authors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Uncle Vanya Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cherry Orchard Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Life in Medicine: A Literary Anthology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Schoolmistress: and Other Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Duel: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sea-Gull Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Anton Chekov Omnibus Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lady With The Dog Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Christmas Stories of All Time: Timeless Classics That Celebrate the Season Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBig Book of Christmas Tales: 250+ Short Stories, Fairytales and Holiday Myths & Legends Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIvanov Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uncle Vanya (NHB Classic Plays) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Darling and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Seagull Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Christmas Stories: 120+ Authors, 250+ Magical Christmas Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Schoolmistress and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUncle Vanya: A Play Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bet: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Three Sisters (NHB Classic Plays)
Related ebooks
The Seagull Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Three Sisters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uncle Vanya (NHB Classic Plays) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Three Sisters: A drama in four acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sea-Gull Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Three Sisters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anna Christie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Plays, written by Sir John Vanbrugh, volume the first Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUncle Vanya Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jerusalem (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Seagull: A play in four acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cherry Orchard Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Three Plays by Edward Albee: The Death of Bessie Smith, The Sandbox, The American Dream Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUncle Vanya: A Play Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Monologues from Shakespeare’s First Folio for Younger Men: The Tragedies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUncle Vanya Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Soliloquy!: The Shakespeare Monologues Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChekhov's Early Plays Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Life is a Dream Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Is How It Goes: A Play Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The White Devil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Straw Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Doll's House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghosts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hairy Ape Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Miss. Julie Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Woman's Prize: aka The Tamer Tam'd "I find the medicine worse than the malady" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Performing Arts For You
For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth (new classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Importance of Being Earnest: A Play Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sisters Brothers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unsheltered: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Whale / A Bright New Boise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hamlet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Count Of Monte Cristo (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diamond Eye: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Trial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Town: A Play in Three Acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mash: A Novel About Three Army Doctors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book: The Script Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Romeo and Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Agatha Christie Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStar Wars: Book of Lists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLucky Dog Lessons: From Renowned Expert Dog Trainer and Host of Lucky Dog: Reunions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Turned Upside Down: Finding the Gospel in Stranger Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Dolls House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Three Sisters (NHB Classic Plays)
194 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Very much a slice of life drama, but it's a life that I can't particularly identify with. It's supposed to be a "classic" but I just didn't get that much out of it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent Russian Miserable Git Theatre.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The play, written in 1900, tells the story of the Prozorov family. Three sisters, Olga, Maria, and Irina Prozorova and their brother Andrei, are living in the Russian countryside. Olga works and cares for her family. Maria is married, but falls in love with the visiting Colonel Vershinin. Irina is the youngest, an idealistic girl who believes she find her love in Moscow. Andrei has aspirations to become a professor and has fallen for a local girl, Natasha, of whom his sisters do not approve. The characters debate the meaning of life, the possibility of attaining happiness and more all while dreaming of a better life in Moscow. The first Act is full of hope and possibility, but as the play progresses and the characters’ lives begin to stagnant, that optimism diminishes. It’s a sad story, no one really gets a happy ending, but the dialogue throughout the story is so beautiful. There’s also a lot of humor worked into the writing. It speaks to Chekhov’s talent that every scene isn’t somber. At the end they are all left wanting something, wishing for more knowledge and a better life. BOTTOM LINE: I loved it. I hope I get a chance to see it performed someday. There are few plays I’ve read that show the drama of a crumbling family quite so eloquently. “When we are dead, men will fly in balloons, change the fashion of their coats, will discover a sixth sense, perhaps, and develop it, but life will remain just the same, difficult, full of mysteries and happiness. In a thousand years man will sigh just the same, ‘Ah, how hard life is,’ and yet just as now he will be afraid of death and not want it.”“I think man ought to have faith or ought to seek a faith, or else his life is empty, empty. . . . To live and not to understand why cranes fly; why children are born; why there are stars in the sky. . . . You've got to know what you're living for or else it's all nonsense and waste.”
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The two stars are more for the recording than the story content. I had trouble following the story because it's a play, meant to be seen not only heard, so it was difficult keeping track of the characters (especially the men) and grasping when the scene changed. Also, the quality of the recording is poor: some voices come through loudly, others are so quiet. It's as if there was a mic in the middle of the stage so voices directly under it are picked up, but not those on the periphery. And I'm quite sure that on the 3rd CD the director or sound editor's voice is included, telling one of the sisters that her scream is too sharp, and she says "Okay" and repeats the last couple of lines. How sloppy!
I should read or see the play instead. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5At first this play could be entitled Noisy Idiots--it's all very blustery and endearing, and certainly just the kind of warmth and din you'd want on entering the theatre on a January day in Russia in 1901--but you do settle in for some sub-School for Scandal-type proceedings, hijinx in any case. The sisters are bored--bien. Olga is a spinster, Masha is married and bored, Irina is pretty as a sugared confection and doesn't love any of the local notables and gots to get to Moscow where rela life will begin. Bien, bien. Their brother Andrei is a big-thought-thinker whose status as the baby of the family has long since shaded into awwardness with the outside world, itself browning into misogyny. And then the soldiers come to town. It's a setting rich with promise--everone's so desperate for something to happen that you know when it does they're gonna milk it. X is gonna turn her nose up at Y, who will be overheard speaking to Z by A, who owes money to B, who is in love with C and her barbed tongue, bien, bien, bien! And everyone leaves a little warmer after "visiting with the Prozorovs," as the Russians were (are?) prone to saying they were doing when they went to see this play. Everybody yells, everybody laughs, the inevitable romantic misunderstanding is defused before anyone gets more than a scare.Except, just as real family life is never as jolly as it seems over the Thanksgiving table or what have you, things are gonna fall apart for our favourite family (the ones whom we wish we could actually visit, all alone in our big house in the winter with nobody but Sergei and Katya and the children and old "Auntie" Lidia Ivanovna in her room on the top floor. If they seem like such a shockingly real family to me with my how-much-poorer twenty-first-century web of one father, one mother, one sister, and one (beautiful!) niece, imagine the shock of recognition for their compeers).And I am a deeply ignorant fellow, but I don't kow of an earlier example of dramatic family fallapart that feels so real. No fated Greekness, none of that deep French cynicism about the meaningful life, no arbitrary Shakespearean event leading to mutual assured destruction among all the characters (too heroic to ever live anyway, of course). These Russians are, as they always are, the first and best existentialists, all looking for one reason to stop yelling and feel calm in their limitedness and their mortality, even amid the endless steppe (one aspect of Irina's ever-awaited return to Moscow is no doubt to avoid looking out into that perfect dark).The point of the family is to keep each other going under unbearable circumstances (BY WHICH WE MEAN LIVING, MAN, JUST LIVING), which means absorbing each other's yelling, caprices, cynicisms. In this family, they're doing a great job--you watch them do it and it makes you love them, delightful self-absorbed Irina, sardonic yet deeply loving Masha, sorrowful and strong strong strong Olga--until the soldiers arrive with their brave/stupid/pointlessly selfdestructive need to scratch at the thin human veneer over the hinterland's dark maw. That is, two of our three destroyers are Vershinin, the "philosopher" (a luxury impossible, irresponsible, criminally culpable, in these circumstances, on the ragged frontline of the bourgeois world!) and Solyony (who I think may actually believe he's dealing with the same black-rye-soul stuff that makes the other characters yell, may not recognize that his father was the wolf or the North Wind or, I dunno, Shiva). But three sisters still outweighs two destroyers--it's when their brother marries Natasha that the critical mass becomes unbearable. Amid so much richly realistic human fellowship and strife, she's the only one with whom it's impossible to sympathize--the provincial petty-bourgeois climber, ruthlessly fighting her way into the manor house, that outpost of metropolitan legitimacy. She is reprehensible, and the sisters--distracted by the soldiers, her horsemen--don't have the stomach. And she usurps them, and the last homely house is destroyed.But it doesn't burn, even though the village does--Chekhov is too sophisticated, too matter of fact for that cheap symbolism. The play ends with the little pas a deux of Chebutykin: "It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter"--and Olga--"If we only knew, if we only knew!" That's still our problem, expressed so mundanely but so hauntingly. How can you bear what is when there's also a what could be? A what could have been?We do know one thing: contrary to Vershinin's much-expressed hope, life is not gonna become "easier and brighter"; the whole play abuses him, who on the surface seems its romantic hero. Or at least, if utopia is really out there, it's far, far beyond the horizon--the play ends in the revolutionary year 1905, and on his 300-year timeline one wonders how many Russians will be here to see the world in which the yelling soul is soothed. If we only knew, if we only knew!