Les tres germanes d’Anton Txèkhov direcció de Declan Donnellan
Foto: Igor Zakharkin
Crítiques i recull de premsa -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Les tres germanes d’Anton txèkhov. Direcció de Declan Donnellan
La premsa ha dit...
“És una gran producció, i un redescobriment emocionant i familiar. Declan Donnellan ha tret la boira agredolça de la melancolia” John Peter. The Sunday Times. 06/05/07
“No em puc imaginar una producció més delicada, lluminosa i penetrant emocionalment del drama de Txèchov” Sam Marlowe. The Times. 30/04/07
“Mai he vist una producció de l’obra que es mogués amb fluïdesa expressiva i que comuniqués els seus estats d’ànim contradictoris amb una precisió tan penetrant” Paul Taylor. The Independent. 04/05/07
“Aquesta obra no només transcendeix les fronteres nacionals sinó també les limitacions de la paraula parlada i dóna a la seva audiència una idea de les possibilitats inherents a la llengua internacional del teatre” Nigel Munro-Wallis. Five Stars. 01/08/08 “La producció és poderosa i convincent. Donnellan ha evitat la configuració estàtica en lloc de Txèkhov per donar-nos una producció amb molta més acció i moviment” John Henningham. Queensland’s Online Stage Magazine. Agost 2008.
Pg. 2
Les tres germanes d’Anton txèkhov. Direcció de Declan Donnellan
The Sunday Times. 06/05/07
by John Peter, Cheek by Jowl tour, 6 May 2007
This is a great production, and a thrilling rediscovery of a great and familiar play. Declan Donnellan has lifted from it the bittersweet mist of gentility and melancholy. The Prozorov girls are young, beautiful, playful and sophisticated: not provincial dreamers, but confident Moscow girls from a good family. They laugh a lot and, as the play darkens, the laughter becomes mocking, ironical, angry, desperate, a form of self-defence and relief. The tragic side of the play becomes more deeply painful: they are proud in defeat. The play is in Russian; most of the actors reached maturity in postGorbachev Russia, and their work has a defiant self-assertion. Alexander Feklistov’s middle-aged Vershinin is masterly: sweet-natured and a little awkward, he’s never been handsome, but he has a boyish eagerness that warms the play.
Pg. 3
Les tres germanes d’Anton txèkhov. Direcció de Declan Donnellan
The Times. 30/04/07 by Sam Marlowe at Cambridge Arts Theatre, 30 April 2007
I cannot imagine a more delicate, delicate, luminous and emotionally piercing production of Chekhov’s drama than Cheek By Jowl’s. Performed by the company’s Russian ensemble, it is directed by Declan Donnellan with utter precision, while Nick Ormerod’s design, with its tiny symbolic doll’s house and oppressive backdrop of perilously tilting walls and windows, conveys the way in which the Prozorov family home is both prison and sanctuary. And the acting is nothing short of sublime. Donnellan never neglects the underlying playful girlishness, born of a shared sibling history, that continually bobs to the surface, buoy-like, to keep the sisters afloat even at their most anguished. After the fire of Act III, the trio cling tearfully together as Nelly Uvarova’s huge-eyed Irina grows almost hysterical. When Ekaterina Sibiryakova, as Natasha, appears, it is as if she has stumbled upon a conspiracy, and the sisters’ distress dissolves into illicit giggles. It’s little wonder that Natasha, so entirely excluded and who begins in Sibiryakova’s performance as pretentious and ambitious, yet touchingly gauche, turns as spectacularly nasty as she does here. The lightness that illuminates the production lies partly in the sisters’ childlike spontaneity and sense of the absurd, and partly in the characters’ observance of social convention. Evgenia Dmitrieva’s lonely, exhausted Olga busies herself, smilingly, with domestic details; and even as Irina Grineva’s Masha wonders how she can continue to bear her “wretched life” she laughs, politely, helplessly. Yet when she meets Alexander Feklistov’s Vershinin, balding, kind and sensitive, part lover, part father-figure, she slyly and appreciatingly flicks her eyes over his body while his back is turned. It’s deliciously naughty. The characters’ frustrated connections stack up with a mounting sense of dread. Conversations are interrupted by a yawn, a guffaw or a sottise. Andrey pours out his heart to a deaf servant; Solenyi’s unwelcome attentions to Irina culminate in actual sexual assault. Kulygin places a cushion against the the belly of Masha and buries his head in it for comfort, as if yearning for the children and happy home she might give him were she not filled with boredom and contempt. And when Irina is given a spinning top as a name-day present, the entire household wordlessly watches it pointlessly revolve, an economically eloquent image of their futile lives. Heartbreaking simplicity; simply heartbreaking.
Pg. 4
Les tres germanes d’Anton txèkhov. Direcció de Declan Donnellan
The Independent. 04/05/07 by Paul Taylor at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, 4 May 2007
Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, the artistic directors of Cheek By Jowl, are in the unusual position of being considered national treasures in two countries - their native England and their adoptive Russia. The company's visiting productions had so impressed Moscow and St Petersburg Petersburg that in 1999 the Theatre Federation took the unprecedented step of inviting them to form a Russian counterpart to Cheek By Jowl. This luminous version of Three Sisters, brilliantly performed by that ensemble, constitutes a complete explanation of why why the Russians have taken Donnellan and Ormerod to their hearts. I have never seen a production of the play that moved with such expressive fluency or that communicated its volatile, contradictory moods with a more piercing precision. We first see the three sisters and their brother Andrei grouped as if for a family portrait civilised, harmonious and in a pose that, while it would have gratified their father, the General, is simply unsustainable since his death, which has left them stranded as overeducated, self-doubting misfits in this remote, crashingly dull provincial town. The staging gives itself a marvellous freedom of manoeuvre by eschewing fussy realism. There's a doll's-house, a wind-up gramophone, a scattering of chairs and tables: changes of setting are swiftly evoked by arranging these items in various configurations. In the second scene, where a visit from the mummers is awaited, the tables become a kind of inner stage with candles as footlights and thus can act as a platform for the philosophising bout between Vershinin and Tuzenbach. Throughout, you get a strong sense of people striving to rouse themselves from depression. True to Chekhov, the production underlines how tragic feeling can erupt in desperate laughter and playfulness. You see this this in a splendidly handled sequence in the scene after the fire. On her usual fault-finding rounds of the house, the usurping sisterin-law Natasha (Ekaterina Sibiryakova) crosses the stage with a candle, too absorbed to acknowledge the sisters. A comment by Masha that "the way she goes about you'd think that it was she who started the fire" reduces the trio to convulsions of mirth. Their contentious sibling intimacy, the humour that can bubble up even in extremis because of long family history, and their snooty conspiratorial bond against the vulgar, awkward Natasha: all of this is beautifully revealed. Nelly Uvarova is the most haunting Irina that I've encountered. She projects to perfection the confused, fearful yearning of a girl who, at 24, feels that the capacity to love has become imprisoned within. Evgenia Dmitrieva is an unusually attractive Olga lonely yet stoic, fanning herself with a handkerchief as if trying to whisk away the unwelcome news of Masha's adulterous passion but matter-of-factly throwing a glass of Pg. 5
Les tres germanes d’Anton txèkhov. Direcció de Declan Donnellan water over Irina when the latter succumbs to hysterics. You learn volumes about the sad, hopeless marriage of Irina Grineva's Masha and the schoolteacher Kulygin here when he beseechingly plumps a pillow against her womb and lays his head on it like a little boy anxious to be comforted. Not that you feel that their union would have been any happier had she given him children. It's never occurred to me before to speculate about what happens to Bobik, the sisters' sickly and much cosseted baby nephew. But here, because of the Russian cast, I fell to wondering how he fared in that country's future. Were his mother's genes dominant or those of his father? Did he become a Soviet apparatchik or was he purged?
Pg. 6
Les tres germanes d’Anton txèkhov. Direcció de Declan Donnellan
Five Stars. Nigel Munro-Wallis. 01/08/08
Review: Three Sisters Aug 01, 2008 By Anton Chekhov Playhouse – Part of the 2008
Brisbane Festival Chekhov’s plays have something of an undeserved reputation for being somewhat dry and difficult and that, undoubtedly, will deter some in Brisbane from venturing out on a cold night and catching a performance of Three Sisters, currently playing at the Playhouse as part of this years exciting Brisbane Festival. Add to this is the difficulty of the production being staged in Russian with English surtitles and this production was never destined to be a big crowd puller. But what a pity! Declan Donnellan’s production, brought to Brisbane in association with Cheek by Jowl and the Chekhov International Theatre Festival, is one of the most stunning pieces of theatre I have seen for some time and to miss it is to miss an experience that will truly move the soul. Certainly, for an initial period as the play opens one needs to take time to adjust to the difficulty of experiencing a production in a foreign tongue. I for one understand no more than the odd word of Russian – particularly when delivered at the cracking pace of this piece – but the surtitles are easy to read and one soon gets caught up in the simple beauty of this production. When all is said and done, how is this experience any different from sitting through a foreign language film or the performance of many of our favourite operas? The beauty of this piece transcends mere words and one soon becomes transported to another world as one watches Olga, Masha, Irina , Andrey and their circle of friends, would-besuitors and lovers struggle to find meaning in their provincial life while all the time hoping for so much more. One doesn’t need to understand precisely what is said to feel the emotion and tension of this piece and it is to Donnellan’s credit that the audience remains on the edge of their seats from the first scene to the last in this superb production.
Pg. 7
Les tres germanes d’Anton txèkhov. Direcció de Declan Donnellan Traditionally and rather lengthy piece, Three Sisters passes by in what seems like a few moments. I have rarely been so moved by a piece of theatre and certainly never by any other production of a Chekhov play. This piece transcends national boundaries; it transcends the limitations of the spoken word and gives its audience a taste of the possibilities inherent in the international language of the theatre. I was so excited by this piece that I could, quite honestly, have sat through the entire performance again right then and there. Set and costume designs by Nick Ormerod are stunning in their deceptive simplicity. The stunning backdrops, firstly of the tilting walls and later of that fabulous forest are amazing. One is kept totally in the moment at all times – I could smell that Russian country air and could feel the atmosphere of that house. The tiny doll’s house that sits so casually throughout much of the action says more than any words could do about the innocence and constriction of the world that the Prozorov family have built so carefully around themselves. Prison and sanctuary, innocence and petty intrigue, it is all their surrounding this tragic family the whole time. An ensemble piece that for my money simply cannot be faulted, Three Sisters is an experience that will not easily be forgotten. Full marks to Lyndon Terracini and his remarkable team for having the foresight to bring this theatrical treat to us during this wonderful festival.
Pg. 8
Les tres germanes d’Anton txèkhov. Direcció de Declan Donnellan
Queensland’s Online Stage Magazine. John Henningham. Agost 2008.
Three Sisters Brisbane Festival/Chekhov International Theatre Festival (QPAC Playhouse) In a Brisbane Festival full of innovation and surprises, the staging of Chekhov's masterpiece in its original Russian proved to be a unique and valuable experience. (Fortunately sub-titles are provided to enable local audiences to fully appreciate the text — the titles are screened on monitors to each side of the stage, avoiding the upward gazing of opera audiences seeking meaning from surtitles.) The joy of the production from Brisbane's perspective is to see a top Russian ensemble acting a brilliant play in the language of its author, bringing something of the Russian soul to the other side of the earth. The language sounds deliciously rich and meaningful (irreverently recalling the Jamie Lee Curtis character Wanda in A Fish Called Wanda, so aroused by John Cleese's fluency in russkiy yazyk). But regardless of the language concerned, it is indeed a fascinating experience to experience a foreign-language play in its original voice, and I hope we will have more such opportunities in Brisbane. Directed by Declan Donnellan for the Chekhov International Theatre Festival, the production is powerful and convincing. Donnellan has eschewed Chekhov's rather static settings to give us a production with much more action and movement. The luncheon table of Act I is centre stage rather than upstage behind pillars, and characters dance and run around it. Intimate exchanges are spotlighted while other characters are in shadows. There's the usual quirky collection of characters who people Chekhov plays, with wistful and wandering philosophising. They speculate about the distant future, wondering whether people would fundamentally be any different 200 years hence — in our century. (Answer: no.) Irina Grineva shines as Masha, lovelessly married and increasingly drawn to the melancholy middle-aged colonel Vershinin (Alexander Feklistov). Evgenia Dmitrieva as Olga, the anchor of the family, and Nelli Uvarova as youngest sister Irina yearning for Moskvábeautifully depict characters who are at once different and similar. Igor Yasulovich as the old army doctor, Chebutikin, is superb, engaging us with his laconic utterances and observations. As the young aristocratic officer Tuzenbach, Artem Semakin projects optimism and naiveté. The romance between Vershinin and Masha is touchingly and organically depicted, through to its highly-charged and physical farewell scene. Also effective are Alexey Dadonov as the sisters' cuckolded brother, Andrey, and Ekaterina
Pg. 9
Les tres germanes d’Anton txèkhov. Direcció de Declan Donnellan Sibiryakova as as wife Natasha, who eerily morphs into the sister-in-law from hell. Alexander Lenkov and Galina Moracheva give touchingly real characterisations of the deaf council watchman and the elderly nurse.
Nick Ormerod's design evokes the 19th century provincial mansion of the sisters as they yearn for a more fulfilling life in the big city. No doubt many contemporary Muscovites would happily exchange their lot for life in the provinces, but the grass on the other hills is always greener, as Chekhov knew so well.
Incidentally, it's interesting to discover that the common naming of this play as "The Three Sisters" is contrary to the Russian title, Tri sestri, which lacks the definite article. This production corrects the error. Concordant with his capturing of universal themes, Chekhov was writing about any three sisters, whose story is repeated over and over in culture after culture and until the end of time. — John Henningham
Pg. 10