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Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

Volume 12 Number 3, December 2011

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THREE SISTERS ADAPTED

BY BRUCE MCMANUS

Theatre Projects Manitoba presenting Zone 41, 2011

 

what was gained by moving the play close to an airbase

at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in the 1950s? What was gained

but the “spectacular” jet flight exhibition cum dog fight

that it took us almost three hours to get to? What was gained

was moments in McManus’s dialogue that sounded right

coming from this cast. No phony Russianness was our relief

 

this Three Sisters, played out on an alley stage, too often

left you in the dark as your gaze was brutally

shifted from one end of the stage to the other, manhandled

by the lighting plot or because you couldn’t see, though others could

what was happening among the clump of actors down in the left court

while you maintained a clear view of audience members siting across

 

most relationships faltered as they will and must in Chekhov

but here everyone seemed to live in bubbles from the very top

nothing was broken up because everything had already burst

except in the case of the doctor, played by Harry Nelken

who showed us a man trying but no longer able to exist on nostalgic fumes

his plane spiraling out and he’s not even reaching for a parachute

 

he became the centre of the show because here choices were made

that drew attention and the story was told that life both is and is not

in our desires’ control

 

 

- P.K. Brask