The Three Sisters, Southwark Playhouse

Chekhov’s popular and melancholy play The Three Sisters is this April treated to a modern reinterpretation by award-winning playwright Anya Reiss. The venue? The Southwark Playhouse’s lovely digs on Newington Causeway.

Irina, the youngest, is the most idealistic and hopeful of the three titular sisters. The play opens on her birthday and in Reiss’ version, the impenetrable Russian geography of the play is transposed to England— there is nowhere she wishes to visit more than London. Irina, the tempestuous Masha and schoolteacher Olga (who seems doomed to do more worrying about her siblings than going about getting the life she wants) are pining for England, their ancestral home, and dreaming of Kensington houses. But as they find themselves pursued by admiring men and the need to find work grows, the dream seems ever more distant. 

It’s a skilled adaptation that only edits out a few of the dialogue’s endless Russian nicknames, and successfully manages to transpose Chekhov’s vision of Moscow onto London. Chekov invokes such a moving sense of longing and of curtailed ambition, and Reiss has done particularly wonderful work with the character of Masha. A brooding adolescent presence, the character absorbs herself in her music and bursts into song as if her heart cannot take it any longer.

This production is the sequel to a version of Chekhov’s The Seagull that Reiss adapted last year for the Southwark Playhouse. It starred Lily James (shortly to be appearing as Cinderella in the forthcoming Disney film) as the heroine Nina, and Matthew Kelly, a fine West End actor seen from The Globe to The Savoy. We can expect a similarly spectacular range of talent in Three Sisters. 

The Telegraph described The Seagull as “expertly cast” and picked out director Russell Bolam for enormous praise – which is good as he returns to helm in this production. He has had a busy February already, directing In Skagway at The Arcola, and with experience working with the Royal Shakespeare Company is sure to breathe life into this radical adaptation of a classic.

Anya Reiss is part of an up and coming set of young London playwrights who have made a huge impact on modern theatre. Her first play was published when she was just 14, and at 17 her play Spur of the Moment opened at the Royal Court, winning her the Evening Standard’s Most Promising Playwright Award in the same year. She most recently collaborated with Headlong Theatre Company on their revival of Spring Awakening. 

This will be an unmissable production at an ever-exciting fringe venue.