“We can’t stand it here. The sky is grey and the streets are grey.” In Lucy Caldwell’s new version, Chekhov’s Three Sisters are transposed to 1990s Belfast, and are the daughters of a British army officer. With both parents dead, Orla (Julie Maxwell), Marianne (Christine Clare) and Erin (Amy Blair) are rootless, and long to be elsewhere. Unlike the remote garrison town of Chekhov’s original, the Belfast setting in the last years of the Troubles is so specific it overshadows the young women’s personal unhappiness.
Alex Lowde’s set creates an open frame where interior and exterior worlds overlap, and characters keep barging in. Instead of domestic claustrophobia, there is a sense of interruption and unease. From the opening scene of Erin’s birthday party, a discordant mood is created by director Selina Cartmell, with the family and their ill-assorted guests talking past each other. From the sisters’ casual racism towards their Chinese future sister-in-law, and ambivalent attitudes to the jaded soldiers who hang around Erin, there are moments of compelling observation. In half-hearted fancy dress, it is as if the sisters are trying to have fun, but don’t know how to.
Caldwell’s text suggests that it is their time and place that prevents them. As uneasy ceasefires pave the way for the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the sisters’ torrents of words increasingly reflect public discourse about “moving on”. The irony of their not moving anywhere is at the heart of this ambitious adaptation, which is more engaging the less it tries to mirror Chekhov.
- At the Lyric, Belfast, until 12 November. Box office: 028-9038 1081.
