Chekhov's Three Sisters in a Czech Mate

Jade Justad as Angela in 3Sisters.Cz at GESAMTKUNSTWERK!

If you are going to name your new theatre company GESAMTKUNSTWERK!, you may as well found it in Seattle, North America's operatic answer to Richard Wagner's Bayreuth. Wagner didn't invent the "total artwork" term, but it was his dream for his operas.

The fledgling theatre company makes heroic attempts to synthesize media and experience in its first fully-produced play, 3Sisters.Cz by Czech actor/playwright Iva Klestilová (two shows left, January 29 & 30; tickets: $10-$15). Hoses spray real water, screen projections display a fiery apocalypse, rain pours off awnings over the audience, radio announcements are piped in, televisions turn on--it's astonishing in a fringe theatre production.

But you may also be astonished by the play itself, which is only in the loosest sense "based" on Chekov's Three Sisters--largely in that there are three sisters in this play, as well. It's set in the Czech Republic in 2002, and director Dani Prados notes that rather than trying to fit Chekhov's plot into modern-day life, Klestilová "preserves the emotional cores of these complex individuals." I did not find that to be the case, unless you felt that a Lucian Freud portrait preserved the emotional core of, say, the Mona Lisa.

I think it would be more honest to describe the play in terms of its creation--a Czech actor playing Olga in Three Sisters develops, in a conflation of that experience with the social stresses of her country--her own nightmarish vision of sisterhood: debased, frustrated, and neurotic.

The sisters are the cougar-ish Emma (Meredith Binder), beaten-down Anna (Devin Rodger), and attention-whore Angela (Jade Justad). Emma begins rather grandly, hidden behind silent-era movie-star sunglasses, but her jacket comes off when a brawny fireman (Devin Michael) shows up. Anna mopes about until she spots a fireman she likes. She's married to a teacher (Chris Sorenson) who, we learn, collaborated with the Communist secret police, and whose career is effectively dead.

Angela fills her time shrieking with mocking laughter or bitter envy, and bedding a Young Man (Gabriel Congdon), who starts off very circumspect but of course treats her dismissively once they've fucked. Angela is also foul-mouthed, just FYI. Justad looks to be a fine young actor, but this role as a harpy-in-training who wants everything her sisters have--right now!--only occasionally demands any nuance.

Jesse Keeter as "Man in a Hat" in 3Sisters.Cz at GESAMTKUNSTWERK!

The English translation by Stepan Simek aside, it felt to me that a translation of Czech life was missing. The play assumes a good deal of knowledge that the casual Seattle theatre-goer may not have, of Czech social mores, and political figures and history. Otherwise, while Chekhov cast the rise of a new order in his sisters' family against social unrest, Klestilová offers only familial dysfunction with a side of surreal catastrophe.

Prados' direction is decentralized, which creates a swirling disorientation that's right for the play. Action jumps from upstage to back, from left to right, and important information is delivered via the radio and TV, so your careful attention is called for. But meaningful moments felt parachuted in: sisterly disclosures were unmotivated, and family spats felt performed, loudly, for the audience.

It's difficult when you suspect your negative reaction is a playwright's intent: "Yes, this is what I'm saying: Life is not sweet." In that sense, if you walk out disturbed and angry, the work might be fairly called a triumph.

But I failed almost entirely to appreciate the third act, which veers sharply from the preceding events. The three sisters gorge on cake, and everyone gathers to roast hot dogs over the fire that's consuming everything around them. The apocalypse takes place via television and overhead projections, and there's a substantial five minutes or more of video in which things happen that I couldn't make out from my seat. Then the actors exit, and the audience decides, glancing around, the play must be over.

For the record, I don't go to live theatre in the hopes of watching videos. But I've seen it used to good effect, nonetheless. Here, closing the evening, it either succeeded completely in sucking the air from the room, or simply...sucked the air from the room.