The Mermaid Players and the Dickinson Department of Theater and Dance presented “Three Sisters” by Anton Chekhov this weekend, Oct. 28- Nov. 1. The run time was approximately two and a half hours, including a ten-minute intermission.

Anton Chekhov, a famous Russian playwright, wrote Three Sisters in 1900.  Sarah Ruhl, a contemporary playwright herself, translated the version the Mermaid Players performed from its original Russian to English.

Three Sisters centers around a family of three sisters, Olga, Masha and Irina, and their brother Andrei and their nostalgia for their childhoods in Moscow.  The plot of the play follows them as they attempt to achieve happiness during a time that Noah Fusco ’18 describes as “the unavoidable shift towards a society where the division between the upper classes and the lower classes are blurred,” in his dramaturgical notes.  He also writes that there is “a quiet apocalypse in late Chekhov: a sense of ‘the way we live now’ ending.”

Audience member Andy Hoover, who is familiar with Checkhov’s writing, said, “Chekhov is usually sad, so it was sad, and that’s what I expected.”  He also thought that the Mermaid Players had chosen an unusual method of portrayal for a Chekhov play. “Chekhov is usually done in an understated manner, but here some of the scenes were very emotional.  It was a very different take on it,” mentioned Hoover.

Kate Hargrove ’20 also noticed the emotionality of the play.  She said afterwards that she felt she, “[needed] to go to my room a cry for a while.”  She elaborated by saying, “Russian theater tends to be fairly depressing.”

The cast of fourteen students impressed audience members with dedication to their roles.  Shana Murphy ’20 expressed a wish to, “congratulate the actors on the wonderful job that they did.  I just thought that everyone stayed in character really well.”

Hargrove was similarly pleased with the Dickinson cast.  “I’m impressed by how talented Dickinson is, especially my fellow classmates in the show,” she said after the Sunday night performance.  The cast included first-year students Sophia Scorcia, Peter Winnard, Kaliph Brown, Abby Duell, Comac Stevens, Alexander Bygrave, Maxwell Farley, and Justin Burkett.

Photos of the production, taken by A. Pierce Bounds ’71, can be found online at http://www.dickinson.edu/galleries/gallery/274/the_three_sisters_photo_gallery.  Upcoming is Our Howl and the Freshman Plays in November and December respectively.