Three Sisters

left to right Nina Dramer (Masha), Samantha Hannum (Irina),
Megan Aldritch (Olga) photo by Bruce Clarke

“They'll forget us. Such is our fate, there is no help for it. What seems to us serious, significant, very important, will one day be forgotten or will seem unimportant,” says Lt. Col. Vershinin (Earl Victorine), in one of the many melancholic moments of Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” now at Sacramento City College’s Art Court Theater, under the direction of Adrienne Sher.

Over four scenes, we watch the three sisters of the Prozorova family, and the others who inhabit the house run the gamut of emotions from the sheer joy of young Irina (Samantha Hannum) on the morning of her 20th birthday to the overwhelming depression of the whole household five years later.   

This is a powerful, moving, sometimes funny production with an excellent cast.  The sisters are played by Megan Aldrich (Olga), Nina Dramer (Masha) and Hannum.  Each has her own personality, from the stern Olga, forced to be the family leader following the death of their father; Masha, stuck in an unhappy marriage and secretly in love with Vershinin; and Irina, whose idealistic dreams slowly die with the passage of time.

Brother Andrey (Thomas Dean) is a talented young man with no drive whose best job seems to be head of the village council.  Wife Natasha (Devon LaBar), the subject of derision for her fashion choices, becomes the shew of the household.

Also outstanding are Tom Rhatigan as Dr. Chebutikin, an eccentric alcoholic doctor, Sean Thomas Olivares as Soleni, a social misfit in love with Irina and Paul Scott as Baron Tuzenbach, also in love with Irina.

With all of their problems, the emotional connection among the sisters remains strong and is the tie that holds this family together.

Uncle Vanya

Christina Schiesari as Elena and Baki Tezcan as Vanya
perform in the Art Theater of Davis production of
“Uncle Vanya,” running through Sunday. Courtesy photo

The sweltering heat of the valley summer should put anybody in the proper mood to see Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” now at the Veterans’ Memorial Theater, presented by the Art Theater of Davis. The final performance is Sunday at 2 p.m.

This is a new translation by award-winning translator Adam Siegel and Timothy Nutter and directed by Nutter, who explains that the script “follows a script based on the original, translated and adapted into American English. We do our best to preserve the spirit and meaning of the Russian text, while also creating a performance that is our own and will work theatrically for actor and audiences of today.”

Professor Alexander Serebryakov (Sean O’Brien) has moved from St. Petersburg, with his much-younger wife Yelena (Christina Schiesari) to the family country estate run by Ivan Petrovitch Voinitsky — Vanya (Baki Tezcan), his brother-in-law, and Sonya (Jenna Templeton), Serebryakov’s daughter from a previous marriage. He proposes to sell the land and live off the proceeds, a suggestion that upsets Vanya so much that ultimately things are left as they are.

Add to the mix Mixail Lvovich Astrov, a country doctor (Matt Urban), Illya Illyich Telyegin (Corey Shake), an impoverished landowner who lives on the estate as a dependent of the family. He is nicknamed “Waffles” because of his pockmarked skin.

And then there is Vanya’s elderly mother, Mariya Vasilyevna Voinitskya (Gail Finney), and Marina (Lisa Halko), an old nurse.

Vanya is infatuated with Yelena. Sonya is in love with Dr. Astrov. Both infatuations are unrequited, and even Yelena’s flirtation with Astrov ends abruptly due to her sense that security with the professor outweighs dangerous passion.

The weather is oppressively hot and everyone is bored, especially Yelena. But each of the characters is unhappy in his or her own way. Tempers flare and passions are briefly kindled, there are discourses on the absurdity of it all and it makes for an unsettling situation.

Chekhov plays are wordy and so they rely on a strong delivery by the actors. While it was easy to see that each of the actors in this production is excellent, there were projection problems. I missed most of the dialog by Serebryakov (O’Brien), for example, though his partner in many of the discussions, Vanya (Tezcan) was easily understood.

Jenna Templeton as Sofya gave perhaps the strongest performance of all, though Tezcan also was outstanding, as was Christina Schiesari as Yelena, around whom much of the action of the play revolves.

The set, designed by Nutter, begins modestly, with a table and a few chairs on an otherwise empty stage, but it grows in complexity with each of the four scenes as it acquires walls and additional furniture as well as homey touches such as floral arrangements by Donna Nevraumont.

Art Theater of Davis is the little engine that could. They are small, they are dedicated to performing theatrical works that one is not likely to see elsewhere, and they continue to present quality work, with increasing audiences each time.

One hopes that they will receive the audience support that will keep them around for a long time.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Who knew that Chekhov could be so funny?

Well, not Chekhov, exactly, but playwright Christopher Durang who has penned the Tony award winning “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” now entertaining patrons at the B Street Theater, under the deft directorial hand of Buck Busfield.  Durang does a mashup of those 19th century Russian characters and themes and sets them down in 21st century Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

There is nothing subtle about this Chekhovian knock off, as Durang hits us over the head with blatant references to works such as “Uncle Vanya,” “The Seagull,”  “Three Sisters” and “The Cherry Orchard.”  In fact, the small grove of unseen cherry trees in the backyard of the Pennsylvania home is mentioned so often as “the cherry orchard,” I felt like the old Thurber story about the unicorn (“I said there’s a unicorn in the garden...”) We’re gonna mention it until we’re sure you get it!

But the audience did get it and laughed approvingly (and often uproariously) throughout the delightful play.

Vanya (Greg Alexander) and his stepsister Sonia (Stephanie McVay) have lived their entire lives in their family’s farmhouse, caring for their ailing, now deceased, parents, while sister Masha (Jamie Jones) has been traveling around the world as a successful movie star. (“I can’t help it if I’m beautiful and intelligent and successful, can I?”)

Vanya and Sonia, in wonderful deadpan portrayals, remain trapped and regretful at how much of life has eluded them. Their lives are so routinized that Sonia is thrown for a loop when Vanya gets his own coffee one morning.  Together they wait for the birds each morning, wondering if their favorites will show up.

Cassandra, the new age-y clairvoyant cleaning woman (Tara Sissom, in an often over the top performance) warns them about terrible things coming in the immediate future. (“Beware of Hootie Pie!”)

One of those terrible things is an unexpected visit from Masha and her boy toy, the vacuous Spike (the muscular Jason Kuykendall, who removes his shirt a lot and does a wonderful reverse strip tease, putting his clothes on). Masha has come home to announce her decision to sell the family home (which, for some reason, she owns, her siblings being merely occupants).

Jones does a wonderful turn as the queen of the slasher film, who can’t understand when suddenly the world does NOT revolve around her.

Add to the mix the young star-struck, would-be actress next door neighbor, Nina (Mary Katherine Cobb), who idolizes Masha and is obviously very alluring eye candy to Spike.  Cobb, who has been a member of B Street’s internship program, is making her first appearance with the “big people” and turns in memorable performance.  Davis residents may remember seeing her mother, Mary Cobb, in local community theater performances many years ago.

Things get shaken up at a costume party, to which the reluctant Vanya and Sonia have been convinced to attend with Masha, as part of her entourage, elves to Masha's Snow White.  Sonia finds her gumption and creates her own costume, which outshines Masha.

The party turns out to be a life changing shift for all of them and leads to a memorable monologue for Vanya about the days of “Ozzie and Harriet,” and Bishop Sheen, the days when people still wrote letters and licked stamps, his disconnect from today’s world and despair for the future.  It’s a masterful performance by Alexander.

This is a laugh-out-loud funny production performed by a first rate cast which does the comic genius of Christopher Durang proud.

Three Sisters

It was an auspicious beginning for Davis’ newest theater — The Art Theater of Davis — as it presented its first production, Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” directed by co-founder Timothy Nutter, who is also credited with original script adaptation and set design.

I have to make one comment first off. If you know nothing about Chekhov, or about this play, it would behoove you to do a little research before seeing the show. While the program gives the names of the characters and the actor who plays which character, Chekhov rarely uses the actual name of the character in his script. Other than the three sisters, their brother and his wife, nobody else is called by his or her program name.

Baki Tezcan, for example, gives an excellent performance as Vershinin, the lieutenant colonel commanding the artillery battery in town, who enters into an affair with sister Masha, but it was not until I got home that I realized which character he was because he is only referred to by his military title in the script.

Steve Buchanan plays Tuzenbach, in love with youngest sister Irina, but is only ever called “Baron” in the play.

The only reason I knew that the servant they call “Nanny” is named Anfisa was because I had met the actress when the show was in rehearsal.

Trying to keep up with which actor plays which part is impossible.

The program also gives no help as to how much time has elapsed between the acts. Act 2 takes place nearly two years after Act 1, but as the set is the same, the characters are the same and, I believe, the costumes are the same, how are we to know how much time has elapsed, which is an important thing to know, given the changes that have happened in the family during those two years.

Act 3 is a year later and takes place in a bedroom though since the family has been talking of moving to Moscow, there is no way until well into the act that you realize this is not a Moscow apartment, but a bedroom in the house seen in the first two acts. One should not assume that everyone in the audience is familiar with the play before they see it.

However, this should not have any reflection on the actual performances by the actors, which were, for the most part fine.

Sarah Cohen gives a stern and compelling performance as oldest sister Olga, the matriarch of the family, following their father’s death the year before. Olga is a spinster who does not have much joy in her life. She longs to have married “any man, even an old man” if one had asked her, but she has compassion in her soul and takes a job (school headmistress) she does not want in order to have a home for her aging servant, Anfisa (Scarlet O’Connor, a beautiful job as a doddering old woman fearful of being fired because she is no longer capable of doing her job).

The middle sister, Masha is played by Tatiana Ray. She is 21 at the start of the play and unhappily married to Kulygin (Adam Siegel, who has serious projection problems throughout the first three acts). Her behavior, especially in Act 2, where she vacillates between hysterical, uncontrollable laughter to the depths of depression, bent over, holding a pillow in front of her as perhaps her barrier against the world, might indicate that she suffers from manic depression. She also has the most biting wit and the clearest perception of the family condition.

Irina (Claire D’Angelo) is celebrating her 20th birthday at the beginning of the play. She is young and idealistic and full of dreams of her future life in Moscow, where she knows she will find true love. Ultimately she suffers the greatest loss and though her dreams have been squelched, she resolutely decides to move to Moscow anyway.

Tyler Shaffo is Andrey (Andrei), the youngest child and only male in the family. He, too, plans to move to Moscow, where he knows he will have a shining career as a professor, but by Act 2 his dreams have faded. He is saddled with a shrewish wife and a baby and is stuck in a job as secretary to the County Council. Shaffo has the perfect look of a young Russian intellectual.

Natalia (called Natasha in the play) is played by Cheryl Leohr. She enters the family as a very shy, insecure girl, in love with Andrei. She dresses poorly and much fun is made of an inappropriate belt that she wears (though it appears to match her dress nicely … perhaps costumer Ania Mieszkowska could have made it just a bit more inappropriate!). By Act 2, however, she is a mother and throughout the rest of the play she gradually becomes the boss in the house, especially after Andrei runs up a huge gambling debt and has to mortgage the house in order to pay it.

Patrick Hunt is particularly good as Chebutykin, the old doctor (“nearly 70″), who starts the play as a fun person who has given up drinking and is living a clean life, but later reverts to his old ways and while drunk blurts out a shameful family secret. Irina is his favorite of the three sisters and he is forever bringing her gifts (some speculate that as Chebutykin once had an affair with the girls’ mother, that Irina is really his child, though there is nothing in the plot to address that).

The smallness of the theater (a little gem of a space carved out of part of Third Space, the multipurpose space housing shops, studios, workshops, etc. on Olive Drive behind Redrum Burger) brings the audience into the family and makes us all feel, at times, like uncomfortable guests at a dysfunctional family dinner.