Three Sisters by Chekhov at The Young Vic

Gala Gordon: winsome

I went to the Young Vic last night to watch Benedict Andrews’ production of Three Sisters, Chekhov’s play about the decline of the privileged classes in Russia. It was an interesting staging, bare and sparse. The style mashed up grunge (with a brilliantly weird version of Nirvana’s Nevermind on piano and accordion) with tracksuits and bottle green dinner jackets. It starred Gala Gordon as a winsome, affecting Irina, drifting around the stage first in immaculate, bridal white, then in more mature yellow, her desire to return to Moscow almost primal as she clambered up a ladder made from tables. There were strong performances from the rest of the cast, including the doctor, whose drunk scene was a tour de force of blustery bile; a sexy, almost Ab Fabish Masha; a prim, sensible but affecting Olga, and a Natasha who shades from awkward, vulgar ingenue into an egomaniacal monster. In the second half, stage hands appeared to take away the stage, bit by bit, as if the very world around the actors was diminishing. The empty space left still seemed to be enclosed, claustrophobic and frustrated as the lives of the characters.