The Seagull Goodman Theatre Three Sisters Piven Theatre Workshop
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That would be a disaster and, fortunately, Falls knows it. A more-is-more approach might serve the tragedies of Shakespeare and O’Neill, but Chekhov worked on a smaller scale. Accordingly, Todd Rosenthal’s set consists of a simple, gently raked wooden dock (with the audience seated on three sides) and a couple benches where cast members sit when they’re not in a scene. Costumes are contemporary and unostentatious. And the actors, though playing people prone to outbursts of passion, stay within the normal range of human expression. As Stanislavsky knew and this beautifully acted Goodman Theatre production demonstrates, when performed without histrionics, nobody’s plays are more moving than Chekhov’s.
These machinations are sad and ludicrous at the same time—which is exactly what makes them affecting and true. Falls’s cast expertly captures the paradox, as when Francis Guinan’s sweet, doddering Sorin lists his failures and nobody listens but Scott Jaeck’s Dorn, who laughs. Or when Cliff Chamberlain’s Trigorin asks Mary Beth Fisher’s Arkadina to let him pursue Nina and Fisher responds with a display of desperation that turns groveling into a form of aggression. The constant sense of cross-purposes is nowhere more poignant than in the vulnerable, openhearted performances of Stephen Louis Grush and Heather Wood as Konstantin and Nina, who as the characters with the most illusions at the beginning suffer more than anyone else by the end. Of the two, only one develops the strength to go on.
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Three Sisters Through 11/21: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Piven Theatre, Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes, Evanston, 847-866-8049, piventheatre.org, $15-$25.
