Articles & Essays
Book Reviews Creative
Writing
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