Three Sisters

Anton Chekhov, Cordelia Lynn

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781848428607
• eBook ISBN: 9781788501729
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Drama
• Index: Literature

'Do you ever wonder what would happen if we could live our lives all over again but be fully conscious of it the second time?

I bet we'd try to do everything differently, or at least would know to create a different world for ourselves.'

In a room in a house in a provincial town, three sisters wait for their lives to begin. Olga, the eldest. Masha, the middle child. Irina, the youngest.

The clock strikes. A candle is lit. The clock stops. Something catches fire. The clock strikes. They wake up.

Cordelia Lynn's version of Chekhov's Three Sisters, from a literal translation by Helen Rappaport, was first performed at the Almeida Theatre, London, in April 2019, in a production directed by Rebecca Frecknall.

ACT ONE

Midday. Spring. Sun. Light.

The Prozorovs’ house. A living room with a large hall beyond. The table in the hall is being laid for lunch.

In the living room, OLGA in navy, MASHA in black, IRINA in white.

OLGA. Daddy died a year ago today. Exactly a year ago, the fifth of May, on your birthday. Irina. It was cold. It was snowing. You fainted – do you remember? – and I thought I wasn’t going to survive but here we are a whole year later and we can talk about it like it was –

Look at you now. You’re wearing white again. You’re radiant.

The clock strikes twelve.

The clock struck twelve just like that.

Pause.

I remember when they carried him out of the church the military band was playing, and the soldiers fired a salute at the graveside. But even though he was a general there weren’t many people, at the funeral I mean. Though it was raining. Heavy rain and snow /

IRINA. Why are you doing this?

NIKOLAY, IVAN and VASILY come into the hall.

OLGA. No leaves on the birch trees yet, but it’s warm enough to keep the windows open… It was the beginning of May when we left Moscow too but everything was already in bloom. It was so hot, the city was rich in the sunshine. Then Daddy was given his brigade and we had to move here and although it was eleven years ago I remember it like it was yesterday… God! I woke up this morning, I opened my eyes and my room was full of light, my room was full of the spring and I felt like I was filling up too and I longed, I longed to go home.

IVAN (to VASILY). Bollocks!

NIKOLAY (to VASILY). That doesn’t make any sense.

MASHA (whistles her song).¹

OLGA. Stop whistling Masha. It’s annoying.

Pause.

It’s just that I get these headaches. I go to school every morning and teach all day and my head aches and aches. My brain feels sort of crippled and my thoughts are sort of dead, like I’m old already… I’ve been working at that school for four years and for four years they’ve bled me dry, drop by drop, every day, but there’s one thought left in me that gets clearer and clearer /

IRINA. Get out of here and go back to Moscow! Sell the house, settle up and go. To Moscow…

OLGA. Yes! Back to Moscow as soon as we can.

IVAN (laughs). NIKOLAY (laughs).

IRINA. Andrey’s going to be a professor anyway so he can’t live here. The only thing stopping us is Masha…

OLGA. Masha will come and visit us every summer, for the whole summer.

MASHA (softly whistles her song).

IRINA. It’ll all work out, you’ll see. It’s such a lovely day today! I feel like my lungs are expanding. When I woke up I remembered it was my birthday and I was so excited, like on my birthday when I was little and Mummy was still alive. I had such wonderful dreams…

OLGA. You’re glowing today, you look beautiful. Masha is beautiful too. Andrey would be handsome but he’s put on weight and it doesn’t suit him. And I’ve got old and thin, I suppose from being angry at the girls all day… But not today! Today I’m free, I’m at home, I don’t have a headache, I actually feel my age again! I’m only twenty-eight after all… Everything happens for a reason, but sometimes I think I’d be happier if I got married and could stay at home all day.

Pause.

I would have loved my husband.

NIKOLAY (to VASILY). You’re ridiculous, I’m sick of listening to you. (Comes into the living room and sits at the piano.) I’ve been meaning to tell you, our new battery commander is planning to visit today.

OLGA. Really?

IRINA. Is he old?

NIKOLAY. Not very. Mid-forties at most. (Plays the piano as he speaks.) He seems nice. Certainly not stupid, though he does talk a lot.

IRINA. Is he interesting?

NIKOLAY. Fairly. But he has a wife, a mother-in-law and two daughters, it’s his second marriage too, and wherever he goes he says, ‘I have a wife and two daughters.’ He’ll say it here, just you wait. Apparently she’s sort of mad, the wife, does her hair in a long, thick plait like a little girl, talks politics and pseudo-intellectual stuff and every now and again tries to kill herself, apparently just to annoy her husband. I’d have done a runner long ago but he just complains about it to everyone.

VASILY and IVAN come into the living room. IVAN is reading a magazine.

VASILY (at once). With one arm I can lift sixteen kilos, / but with two arms I can lift fifty, even sixty kilos. Evidently two men are not twice as strong as one, but about three times, if not more…

IVAN (at once). For male pattern baldness… dissolve five grams of naphthalene in half a bottle of spirit… Use daily. (Writes in a little notebook.) I’ll make a note of that… So as I was saying, you just put a cork in a little bottle, run a glass tube through it, then you take the teeniest pinch of ordinary /

IRINA. Ivan Ivan Ivan!

IVAN. Yes, my love, light of my life?

IRINA. Why do I feel so happy today? Like I’m sailing in a great blue sky with great white birds all around me. Tell me why!

IVAN (takes her hands and kisses them). Little bird…

IRINA. I woke up this morning, I got out of bed, I got washed, and suddenly it was like I understood everything in the world and I knew how we’re supposed to live. Trust me, I know everything. We have to work. Whoever we are we have to work and work hard otherwise we’ll never be happy. If you don’t work then you may as well not be alive, you may as well forget being a human being altogether! It’s better to be an animal than a young woman who wakes up at twelve, has breakfast in bed then takes two hours to get ready. It’s disgusting! You know how in hot weather you long for a glass of cold, clear water? That’s how I long to work. And if I don’t start getting up very early and working very hard then you have to promise never to speak to me ever again!

IVAN (tender). I promise, I promise…

OLGA. Daddy made us get up at seven every day. Now Irina still wakes at seven but she lies in bed for hours thinking and thinking. (Laughs.) And she has such a serious expression on her face!

IRINA. You still think I’m a little girl so you find it funny when I’m serious. But I’m twenty years old!

NIKOLAY. I understand you completely Irina. I come from a rich and privileged family that didn’t have to work and never worried about anything. When I got home from cadet school an orderly used to take off my boots while I had some kind of a tantrum, but my mother spoilt me and was surprised if anyone thought I was anything less than miraculous. They tried to protect me from work, they hid me from it. But they didn’t succeed, not quite! The world is changing, you can feel the weight of it building in the air. There’s a great storm coming, coming closer and closer and it’s going to break over all our laziness and indifference and apathy and cleanse the rotten heart right out of our society. I’m going to work, and in twenty-five or thirty years so will everyone else. Everyone!

IVAN. I won’t.

NIKOLAY. You don’t count.

VASILY. In twenty-five years you’ll be dead. If you don’t have a stroke first I’ll crack and put a bullet in your brain. (Takes out a bottle of perfume and perfumes his chest and his hands.)

IVAN. But the truth is the moment I graduated I didn’t do a thing. I even stopped reading, I haven’t finished a book in years. All I read are these silly magazines. Look… (A magazine.) According to this magazine there was a critic called Dobrolyubov, but what he critiqued and why I haven’t the foggiest…

Knocking from the floor below.

That’s for me! It’s for me. I’m expecting someone. I’ll be back in a minute…

Exit IVAN.

IRINA. He’s up to something…

NIKOLAY. He’s obviously going to give you some kind of extravagant present.

IRINA. But I told him not to!

OLGA. Why is he always doing th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Original Production
• Play In Between: An Author’s Note
• Characters
• Three Sisters
• About the Authors
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information