The Classical Theatre Company closes its 17th season with Anton Chekov’s Three Sisters. Olga (Brittny Bush), Masha (Cat Thomas) and Irina (Alexandra Szeto-Joe) long to return to Moscow. Having lived in a small Russian town for the last eleven years due to their father being stationed there, they wish to move back home to the city of which they have fonder memories.
No matter what style in employed, no production can escape the deep-rooted sense of toska that underlies all the action, behavior and thinking of the three sisters. The melancholy, nostalgia, and deep sense of dissatisfaction mars every interaction and relationship that these women choose or don’t choose. It acts almost like the perpetual cloud in their lives from which their heads are unable to withdraw.
As the play unfolds and reality inevitably breaks down the delusions, the sisters can no longer rely on the ghost of Moscow to buoy their unhappy lives and unfulfilled desires. While the sisters finally accept they will never return home to Moscow, none of them look forward to life anywhere else.They had eleven years to build a life for themselves outside of Moscow. Instead, they fantasized and let life happen to them. Unsatisfying jobs, failed marriages, unreached potential, abandoned dreams.
Failure rarely draws a laugh unless it’s slapstick or clown comedy. But it’s Chekhov so of course there are moments of apt irony and sharp wit. Chekhov always described his plays as comedies, but it’s no wonder by the end of the play why audiences walk away believing it’s a tragedy.
The extent to which Three Sisters is a comedy boils down to the director’s choice, and Executive Artistic Director John Johnston embraces the comic elements of the play. There are moments where the humor seems to undermine the tragic themes of this play such as when Irina pours out her heart to Olga.
She unravels and shares how unhappy she is and how much of her former learning she has forgotten. In response, Olga farcically cringes and her facial expressions are exaggerated. While laugh-out-loud funny, that response didn’t seem appropriate. It didn’t feel real.
Sometimes the comedic choices distracted from the reality of how far down each character has dug their own hole, but other times it perfectly strengthened the more tragic elements of the play like with Kulygin (Benito Vasquez) who is resolved to maintain his marriage with Masha despite her infidelity.
Whether Chekov’s work should be categorized as a comedy, tragedy, tragicomedy, or something-and-everything in between boils down to personal taste. What matters most is that whoever produces knows that the work is real. The characters, their pathologies, and their desires are very much real, and with a cast like this, the performances were well-rooted. While the ensemble as a whole does great work, Alexandra Szeto-Joe (Irina), Benjamin McLaughlin (Tuzenbach) and Jay Sullivan (Vershinin) stand out.
Szeto-Joe’s Irina is guileless and wishful. As the youngest, she spent the least amount of time in Moscow, yet she’s the most enamoured with returning. She lives the most in her head, so watching her become ever so uncomfortable in her own body fascinates. The far away look in her eyes as she imagines all the possibilities. The cold, hard stare at the end as she finally accepts the reality of living in the small town and the mundane life as a teacher she has chosen.
McLaughlin is Irina’s love interest, who fell in love with her from the moment he met her. His love for her is sincere and his initial passion for philosophy is endearing. While the realities of life come to him as well, it is his love for Irina that sustains him. While everyone seems to be progressing towards cynicism and nihilism, here comes the baron to remind everyone of his values, his passions, and of course, his ever burning love for Irina.
His performance burns with an earnest vulnerability. He knows he’s out of place in certain conversations so his body awkwardly squirms when he sits or his gestures seem slightly out of sync. He never is fully relaxed but there’s a zeal when he speaks, and his heart feels more expressive and singular than everyone else’s.
While the thematic heart of this play is found in how the sisters relate to the world, it is McLaughlin’s clear sense of purpose and meaning hampered by his awareness of the changing world that makes his conviction a site for optimism in a play where so many seem to be willfully delusional or utterly hopeless. McLaughlin balances the idealism and practicality of Tuzenbach’s character with little sentimentality and with a higher sense of dignity than is expected.
Sullivan is the philosophizing Lieutenant Colonel newly assigned to the town who is unhappily married to a woman with whom he used to be madly in love. Sullivan speaks in a lofty manner but the words are empty. He seemingly has convictions but they seem empty. He has the most authority, yet he seems like he wants to escape from his life just like everyone else. He believes that happiness will come in future generations but suffering is for the present moment.
Yet when he and Masha say goodbye, it’s clear that he experiences happiness with her. Sullivan captures this sense of the colonel that is both emotionally deep yet whose philosophies and ideas prevent him from ever fully living in those emotions. Sullivan perfectly captured well this st Everything in his life is routine and expected except for his relationship with Masha.
There is much that can be said about this production, but it’s better to see it, for words can’t fully grasp how dynamic of a cast this is and the comic choices made by each that erupts the theatre in laughter. Go simply to hear the unique line deliveries of words such as “housecoat” and the many variations one can say “Bobik” by the always entertaining Lindsay Ehrhardt who plays Natasha.
Go even more because the dissatisfaction that the characters feel toward their lives as they emotionally and psychologically reckon with a dying dream makes for an engaging two hours and fifteen minutes of performance art.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
