Three Sisters at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe – review

You could perhaps call it Chekhov unplugged, or even Anton goes acoustic. Either way, this debut of the great Russian dramatist at the Globe, in the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, feels like it’s taking him back to his roots. It’s about as far from Benedict Andrews’ landmark 2012 reworking that you could go.

Rory Mullarkey’s lucid new translation highlights the expansive plain-speaking of the characters. They’re forever bluntly laying out their innermost thoughts, sometimes in soliloquy, but more often at each other; spewing their neuroses over anyone who happens to be in range.

It’s all deeply un-British but, says Mullarkey in a programme note, that’s the whole point. To revel in the Russian-ness. What’s interesting is that, far from draining the text of humour, it heightens it. Caroline Steinbeis’ production finds laughter in even the most unexpected places. When the previously pollyannaish Irina (Ruby Thompson) talks frankly of her existential despair, it elicits laughter; at the end, Masha (Shannon Tarbet) screams in visceral agony when Vershinin (Paul Ready) leaves her, and is quickly undercut to comic effect by Olga (Michelle Terry), ever the schoolmistress, berating her “that’s enough”.

Designer Oli Townsend’s period costumes and set, which stylishly incorporates the oft-mentioned trees surrounding the house, emphasise the isolation of the family and the staid nature of their daily lives. Reminders of time passing, a major theme of the play, are everywhere. When the company closely observes the spinning top brought by Fedotik (Kelvin Ade), it feels like they’re watching their own lives ebb away. Irina’s name written in flowers above the stage further establishes the funereal feel. The sisters’ yearnings – for Moscow, for love, for anything but the drudgery of their provincial existence – fade along with the candlelight, which provides a highly apposite metaphor as it’s gradually snuffed out.

The compact Wanamaker stage also enhances the sense of peripheral characters constantly encroaching on the sisters’ lives. When Olga bemoans that the garden feels like a “thoroughfare”, she’s not overstating it. The characters flow in and out in tidal fashion, each one altering the chemistry. Even the impressive four-strong band adds to the sense of a crowd. It’s funny how a play ostensibly about isolation can feel so claustrophobic.

It’s delivered by a fine ensemble, the central sisters offering their own distinct variation of misery (as Tolstoy had it, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way). Terry’s Olga is frayed by the stresses of work and her desperation for a husband, the foil to Thompson’s innocent Irina, while Tarbet’s Masha is an almost goth-like presence in black, mourning her deathly marriage to Fyodor (a magnificently earnest Keir Charles). Ready’s verbose Vershinin (“I need to philosophise!”) is her echo, as he openly uses the house as a refuge from his own miserable marriage. There’s also strong support including Peter Wight’s sardonic Ivan, who hums the refrain “I’m killing time today”, and Michael Abubakar’s Tuzenbach, so admirably if hopelessly devoted to Irina.

At times the production can feel overly reverential, playing too much to the head rather than the heart. And its propensity to look for laughs leaves you strangely aching for a little more pain. However, when it comes to proving the concept, it undoubtedly whets the appetite for more Chekhov by candlelight – and confirms Mullarkey as one of his leading contemporary interpreters.