Three Sisters on Hope Street

Synopsis

Chekhov-inspired Three Sisters on Hope Street, relocates this complex story of family ties in 1940s Liverpool. Liverpool, 1946: A year after the sudden death of their father, sisters Gertie, May and Rita Lasky share their asthmatic brother Arnold, Auntie Beil (who still keeps her packed suitcase under the spare bed) and old family friend Dr Nate Weinberg (who claims, hand on heart, to be on the wagon). As the sisters regularly welcome GIs and pilots from the nearby American base, each continues her own search for meaning amidst the shattered remains of their city, in a rapidly changing world. Combining warmth, poignancy and comedy, this vibrant new take on Chekhov's classic unites the talents of Diane Samuels and well-known television and theatre actress Tracy-Ann Oberman to create a powerful and witty work.

Our Review:

29 February 2008

As a co-production with Liverpool’s theatres to celebrate that great city’s European Capital of Culture year, 3 Sisters on Hope Street, Hampstead’s re-working of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, is less than an ideal advertisement: the one pure Scouser in the play is a coarse little butcher’s daughter with social pretensions, and the eponymous siblings can’t wait to get out of the place – and “home” to New York. There are also racist riots and a shortage of luxury items.

Hope Street is a straight line of Georgian terraced houses running between the city’s two cathedrals, as well as the home of the Everyman Theatre, the Philharmonic Concert Hall and, immediately after the last war, the Lasky family in this clever re-write “after Chekhov” by playwright Diane Samuels and actress and former EastEnder Tracy-Ann Oberman.

But a big city like Liverpool is not an ideal equivalent of a remote country town. Lindsay Posner’s production, too, is...

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