Three Sisters
Austin Pendleton's production has a star-laden cast and an Americanized translation by Paul Schmidt.
Classic Stage Company, New York
(866) 811-4111
***
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
This intimate, star-laden new production of a Chekhov classic “glows with modern energy,” said Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly. As the play’s often-disappointed Prozorov sisters, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Juliet Rylance, and Jessica Hecht tackle Chekhov’s forever-timely story with “a youthful vigor” that makes the dreariness of their lives in small-town Russia “that much more poignant.” Gyllenhaal “makes a vividly interesting” Masha, the “artistic middle sister” whose lackluster marriage leads her to an affair with an army officer, played here by Gyllenhaal’s husband, Peter Sarsgaard. The casting stunt allows sparks to fly. But it’s not just movie-star glamour that makes this tragicomedy about “hopes and plans falling apart” feel so contemporary.
Director Austin Pendleton hasn’t done anything especially innovative, said Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal. He’s simply juxtaposed “a traditional-looking setting” with a group of actors who look and sound unmistakably modern. “The results are interesting but very uneven.” Gyllenhaal is miscast here, having a “demeanor and voice so obviously contemporary as to jolt the eye and ear.” The same goes for Paul Schmidt’s “deliberately American-sounding” translation of the script. While it’s a relief not to have Chekhov subjected to yet another “wannabe-British staging,” it’s distracting when dialogue is so colloquial that you fear the next line could be, “Dude, who moved my samovar?”
Yet the Americanized language “allows the performers to slide into their parts more naturally than they might otherwise,” said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. Sure, the approach creates a few “anachronistic jolts,” but “the dividends are considerable.” From the sisters to the servants, every role “feels equally life-size,” and a strong emotional current runs between the characters. Rylance’s “poised, melodious” turn as the youngest sister contrasts with Hecht’s spinsterish Olga and Gyllenhaal’s “brooding, restless” Masha. Yet because all are portrayed so vibrantly, their ultimately defeated dreams of happiness “truly break your heart.” (Through March 6)
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
'The answer isn't to shake faith in the dollar'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Dutch government falls over immigration policy
speed read The government collapsed after anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders quit the right-wing coalition
-
The Week Junior Book Awards 2025 Shortlist Announced
The Week Junior Book Awards have unveiled the 2025 shortlist, celebrating the best in children’s literature across 13 categories.
-
If/Then
feature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
-
Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
-
Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
-
The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
-
Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
-
The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
-
No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
-
The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.