ACT 1: The three sisters are Olga (oldest), Masha, and Irina (youngest 20). It starts out at Andrey Sergeyevich Prozorov's house, who is their brother. Gosh you've no idea how many red underlinings are on this page already. So it starts on the one year anniversary of the siblings' father's death. They are now adult orphans. There's a lot of informing the audience conventionally of the past going on, but also it seems like the sisters are dazed and all they could do is narrate their past to each other. Their reactions to the death are different.
Olga's rather lethargic. She's the most 'responsible' I guess. She's a teacher. Unmarried. Irina, is very beautiful, wearing a white dress, and inexplicably happy. Masha just sits here in a black dress, whistles and sings. There's a weird Masha in The Seagull too. And an Irina, who's a beautiful has-been actress. Just a brain snack. Oh, and the basic conclusion of all of them is that they lived in Moscow eleven years ago and all really want to go back, especially Irina, and they have some delusional idea, especially Irina, that everything will be great if only they could get there. Onwards!
So Tuzenbakh (Lieutenant), Solyony (Staff Captain), and Chebutykin (army doctor) enter. The dad was in the army so these girls get a bunch of army visitors. Tuzenbakh announces that Vershinin (Lieutenant-Colonel) will be paying them a visit. He's 40-45 ish, used to know the girls when they were little, and a decent guy, but he has a crazy wife who he's tied to by their two girls, who is basically unconcerned with Vershinin romantically, but he sticks with her, because he's the only one that could handle her constant attempts at suicide.
Now we start getting the comic things. Brain Snack: I call Chekhov's characters Chekhov's train tracks because they're all paralleling each other but heading to different destinations, charging on forwards with their own goals rather disconnected from the others. So you have moments that are tickling, when two characters are talking, but not conversing. One says some random self-philosophy (which happens often, this is the Russian intelligentsia) and then the other says something completely different. This happens a lot with Chebutykin because he's always carrying a newspaper and reading out of it. Head's up, Chebutykin is probably my favourite character, and Olga is the moral Banquo of Three Sis. Now, we find out the first of many admirers. Chebutykin, who apparently gets her a lot of expensive gifts. Irina spouts her ongoing philosophy that work is the greatest thing someone could do, and it's better to be a man than a woman because a man could work more. Brain Snack: Chekhov was always very politically aware, and this is around 1901, let's say. So that's 20 years after Alexander II was killed, the Tsar Liberator; then after the short reign of Alex III, who took back all the liberal reforms of Alex II, limited though they were, and who was russifying everything; and during the reign of Nicholas II, who is eventually overthrown in the Russian Revolution in Feb 1917. So this is that weird period when everyone is like...alright, so no serfs...um right...nothing has happened recently...well, maybe that means we're happy....but that's just...not true...maybe we should make things happen...change, to be more French, or German, or European generally...we should revolutionise, but...well that's a bit ridiculous...nothing's really wrong...I mean, they're saying all this new stuff...well, I don't really have to be involved in it, I'm just one person...but Tsars are a bit done with aren't they...but what else is there.....holy cow there's nothing, nothing in the world, nothing in my life...so what should I do...work, I guess, live, provide, work, work, and maybe in the future, maybe my children's children's children will see some reason and purpose and happiness in the world because everything...is so...empty...and still, and boring. That right there, I think is Chekhov's basic portrayal of most characters he writes, tragic realisations, and fallings into boredom. To paraphrase Brad Pitt in Fight Club, We are the middle child of Russian history. good movie.
SO Tuzenbakh is all for working. But a lot of the philosophising in this is just talk. Chebutykhin isn't. He says he never does anything. He's just into Irina and trying hard not to drink and vaguely reading news. We start getting to know Solyony too. He's one of the funniest characters. Maybe the funniest. The funniest. He's rather rude in public and tight with Tuzenbakh, and he insults people vulgarly but creatively. Like Charlie Sheen in Two and a Half Men. We get the first words from Masha which are from a song. Always significnat. Ophelia-esque. Love to do a commentary on it. She then stands up to wander off but Solyony quotes a line foreshadowing a death in act 4. She stays.
Ferapont (old man) and Anfisa (old nanny-educator) enter. They leave soon after giving Irina a cake. Oh. right forgot to mention. It's Irina's saint day, which is like birthday in Russia. Ferapont's another comedic character. He can't hear well. Chebutykhin who left to get a gift for Irina comes back with it, and then Vershinin enters. This play really has a lot of people entering and going and leaving, more of the Chekov train business really. This house is like a big train station which all lines have to pass through at some point. Vershinin gets along with everyone well, and the girls (esp Irina) get really excited when he says he's from Moscow. Irina keeps pulling the conversation back to that point. The sisters reveal tat they plan to move here by autumn. It's May now. Masha teases him, calling him his old nick name, Lovesick Major. More philosophising on Tsarist, boring Russia.
A violin plays from off stage. There's a lot of music from off stage in this. Andrey, the brother, is playing. It's sort of a reminder of simpler, purer beauty amidst the squabble of discontentment. The siblings are all very well-educated, due to their father. They speak a lot of languages, though they have no use for them, like French and German. Masha suddenly talks a lot and derails Andrey's girlfriend.
Enter Andrey. They flatter with complements, and he exits exasperated. They drag him back. Masha calls him Lovesick Violinist, and thus parallels him with Vershinin. Now, Brain Snack: A stage direction follows that runs 'the whole time he is carrying his newspaper' concerning Chebutykin. Chekhov is known for these stage directions, informing he audience rather than he actors since it's a past-tense stage direction. Remember, a lay is to be acted or to be read, like Samson Agonistes written only to be read. Sort of reminds me of Waiting for Godot where you find out well into the book, suddenly, that they're wearing bowler hats.
More philosphising. Stuff about superfluous knowledge, and educating the masses, and generational evolution in knowledge. Brain Snack: The Superfluous Man (coined by Dostoevsky) was really popular in Russia. Hamlet was really big there too, and the classic superfluous man, an artistic, high-class, educated guy that has nothing at all to do and is useless because of his lofty position. Vershinin comes in with his idea that gradually the mass of ignorance will become smarter by slow influence of smart people, and the future will be beautiful and amazing in generations. This parallels the Moscow idea of Irina. Rather Great Gatsby. The disillusion of attaining what you built up for years as a dream, making the present miserable and the future fictional. This speech is great, but train tracks. No reaction, corpsed entirely. Like Endgame. Funny moment when Irina says someone ought to write all this down. Haha! Chekhov did! But then Vershinin sort of fixes his theory by pointing out what a wonderful life the sisters have, great home, great flowers.
Enter Kulygin, teacher with Olga, husband of Masha. He gives Irina a boring book he wrote on the history of the school, and says it's bad, but read it anyways. Turns out he's already given her a copy before. He's a very bored guy too but it's not so bad for him because he is very pleasant and cheerful. Said by the Roman quotation he recites. See below. Lots of Latin in this. He says he's really happy, a bit callous n the father-in-law's deathiversary. The Masha-Kulygin relationship is like the Masha-Medvedenko relationship in the seagull. Doing, pleasant, innocent professor and gloomy, cold, existentialist girl.
Everyone leaves but Tuzenbakh and Irina and turns out he's in love with her too. Enter Natasha, Andrey's love, who is dressed strangely and Olga points it out. There's a lot of tearing up and crying in this play, and here it is again. Enter Fedotik and Rode (Second Lieutenants) and more comedy. Fedotik takes a bunch of photographs and really randomly pulls out a top from his pocket and is all 'IT SPINS!' Masha is singing again. Some superstitious talk. Thirteen at the table. Lots of superstition in Chekhov. They kid about with Natasha and drama queen as she is, runs out to the other room, and Andrey and he kiss and get engaged. Shocker! But oops. No one else likes her remotely.
ACT 2: Don't worry, that was the longest act. A bit late, but just saying. The stage is complicated, like in the seagull with a stage within a stage with lake and everything, this one has two rooms. A bit simpler. A kitchen and a dressing room, a wall with door between. Right. Twenty--one months passed. Accordion playing offstage. And it's carnival time since there are these people called mummers about. Enter Natasha with candle in dark by Andrey's room. So Natasha's a bitch, She's spoiled, pushy, intrusive, self-centred and anal. They've had a baby, Bobik, and she's planning on pushing Irina to share Olga's room so Bobik can have Irina's, even though it's the sisters' house. Natasha exits, Ferapont enters, more comedy, more philosophy. Andrey dumps his internal angst on Ferapont's semi-deafness and Ferapont gives corpsing answers about a guy that died by eating too many pan cakes. heehee Andrey doesn't feel like anybody understands him and his loneliness, including his wife, and apparently shares the same Moscow dream. Notice, they're still here, Autumn long past. Ferapont just keeps saying What? and returning to the pancake story. ANdrey's carrying a book. He's intellectual. Ferapont has never been to Moscow. He's an interesting character. Amusing, old, ignorant, sweet, contented, pitiful. Nurse singing offstage, entering Masha and Vershinin.
Philosophy. Trains. Vershinin really wants tea. Vershinin's in love with Masha. But she's married!!!! O dear...She's not going for it. Irina and Tuzenbakh enter. Irina's working but manual work, and she's disappointed. Wants work with poetry. Dreams are an issue. Turns out Andrey's been losing money a lot. Irina thinks they're moving to Moscow in June. It's January now. Chebutykhin enters. He's having money issues. He still loves Irina. Vershinin's lodged on the tea train. Philosophy. Unhappiness. Work. Enter Fedotik and Rode singing and playing guitar, sitting. Tuzenbakh has a reasonable moment, pointing out that nothing will ever change so let's be happy. Mash thinks faith is the only armour. Vershinin thinks happiness is impossible and for the future.
Enter Anfisa and then Natasha and the Solyony. Busy place. More philosophy. Solyony's moody. Natasha hates him. I hate her. Vershinin gets a letter from his daughter. His wife has taken poison again. he shoots off without getting his tea. Natasha exits. Solyony and Tuzenbakh have a sentimental conversation where Solyony says he's fine alone with people and he's suddenly shy, depressed and nonsensical in company. Tuzenbakh says he'll finally work. Solyony's all why bother? Nothing means as much as we wish. Enter Andrey and the Chebutykin with Irina. Chebutykin and Solyony have the weirdest conversation where Chebutykin is commenting of a type of mutton called chekhartma and Solyony talks about an onion thing called Cheremsha, confusing Chebuktykin by appearing to mistake the names and then accusing Chebutykin for making the conversation confusing by thinking Solyony is speaking of anything aside from simply the onion thing. Convo recorded in full below.Dancing singing. Solyony is acting weird and leaves.
Natasha enters. Whispers to Chebutykin and exits. Chebutykin whispers to Tuzenbakh. Tuzenbakh, Chebuykin and Andrey leave. Turns out the expected mummers were sent away by Natasha because Bobik is sick. That scrooge. Everyone leaves and Chebutykin and Andrey re-enter. I know really hard to keep track, huh. Andrey's sick of Natasha. Then people switch about again and it's Irina and Solyony on stage. Turns out Solyony is in love with her too and is willing to kill any rival. Irina's not into it. Natasha enters, Solyony huffs out, and Natasha goes all baby-obsessed mom on Irina, and annoys her, asking her to move in with Olga for Bobik. Enter Olga, Vershinin and Kulygin from work and suicidal-wife saving. Everyone leaves and Irina alone on stage with accordion and Anfisa singing offstage. Natasha passes hrough in fur, saying she's going out for half an hour, and alone again, Irina shouts 'Moscow! Moscow! Moscow!'
Act 3: 1 year later. Still here. Set change. Olga and Irina's room. Damn Natasha. There's a village fire!!!
Anfisa and Olga are hurriedly helping everybody, giving away stuff to help. Masha's resting, worn out. Anfisa's scared she'll get fired soon since she's old. Olga is super nice to her and assures her otherwise and is helping a lot. Natasha enters and is cruel to Anfisa and Anfisa exits. Natasha wants to get her fired and Olga's upset and Masha huffs out. Natasha doesn't understand Olga's niceness and doesn't see the servants as people. Kulygin enters looking for Masha. Chebutykin barges in drunk. He'd been sober for two years. He's glum because he is a terrible doctor now, according to him, because he's forgotten everything. The fire's over by he way. The soldiers were very quick about it. Enter Irina Vershinin, and Tuzenbakh. Tuzenbakh is in civilian clothings. Some random talk. Apparently Masha's really good at the piano. Chebutykin randomly breaks a clock. It was the sisters' mother's. darn. Chebutykin reveals that Natasha has been having an affair with Protopopov
Tuzenbakh is back to philosophising but it's just more of the same suff about the future. His wife is at the house, and she had left the daughters in the house to burn, and Tuzenbakh saved them. Intimate moment with Vershinin and Masha singing. Enter Fegotik. His house had burnt away. But he's in some kind of hysterical laughing stage about it. Enter Solyony and Irina tries to kick him out. He leaves with Vershinin and Fedotik. Tuzenbakh mentions a time in Act 1 and seems disillusioned and less hopeful in comparison. He exits. Masha sends Kulygin away. Much like Masha does to Medvedenko in The Seagull. Irina bewails on Andrey's taking a council job which is beneath him and his talent. And all he does, instead of worrying, is play the violin. She's forgetting Italian and is so unhappy and Olga comforts her. Masha confesses to her sisters that she's in love with Vershinin. Disapproval. Masha leaves and Andrey has it out with Olga that he's fed up with his sisters hating on his wife, his job, and his mortgaging the house to cover his debts without asking them. Then he breaks down, weeps, and admits to him having screwed things up. Irina says the army's moving on , and life will be even more boring. She decides to marry Tuzenbakh. He's a decent guy. But she still wants to go to Moscow.
Act 4: A year later, summer. Outside in Andrey's garden. Chebutykin is sitting in a grand mood. The brigade is moving on and Kulygin, Irina and Tuzenbakh say good bye to Rode and Fedotik. The remaining talk. Chebutykin is ridiculous. IRina has a strange, bad feeling. Protopopov, Natatsha's lover, hangs about the house. They hear piano from within. They're bored. Kulygin and Irina leave and Masha enters. Andrey is pushing a baby cart back stage. Chebutykin has decided that nothing matters ever. A harp and violin play in the distance. Solyony has challenged Tuzenbakh to a duel over Irina. Chebutykin doesn't care if Tuzenbakh dies. Scary thought for a doctor. Andrey hates on Natasha. Solyony enters and repeats the line he said in act one. 'He had no time his tale to tell before a bear upon him fell.'
Andrey exits, Irina and Tuzenbakh enter. Kulygin walks about looking for Masha. Tuzenbakh says he's happy but that Irina doesn't love him. She doesn't though they're engaged. He philosophises and leaves. Andrey enters with Ferapont, rambling about the future and boredom and the same philosohpy over and over again even bores the audience, I think. Ferapont mentions thousands freezing to death in Moscow. Strange their lofty life. Travelling musicians play violin and harp and Vershinin, Olga, and Anfisa listen. Vershinin is about to leave to, but stops to ramble a bit about the same old thing.
Masha enters and Vershinin says good bye. He cries and Kulygin sweetly lets her, insisting that all is forgiven. Olga comforts and Masha repeats that old thing about the oak with the gold chain by the seashore from act 1, like Solyony repeats and like Nina repeats that she is a seagull in The Seagull. A sign of madness? Masha refuses to go inside, and so supports the idea of the house being a symbolic and literal trap, so the set finally being outside in act 4. Irina had entered and now Natasha too. She's going on about her new daughter Sofochka. Then in one go, she declares she's taking over the house, she's cutting down the trees everyone lives, (especially Tuzenbakh) and yells at the maid because there's a fork on the seat. The brigade leaves with the sound of a band and Chebutykin enters.
He yells Olga! and whispers to her. Olga;s shocked but Chebutykin is all What does it matter! Irina asks what's up and he says Solyony killed Tuzenbakh in the duel, and then he pulls a newspaper out of his pocket and sings. What can it matter! Tra la la. The sisters comfort each other and say they shall live and start anew and work. Ending in full at the bottom with Chebutykin and Olga. A very cliffhanger, empty, daunting ending. Read, folks. Read. Irina: My God, better even not to be a man, better to be an ox, a simple horse, if only to work, than a young woman (1)
TuzenbakhT: his time has come, a great mass is moving towards all of us, a mighty, healthy storm is rising, it's coming, it's already near, and soon it will blow sloth, indifference, contempt for work, this festering boredom right out of our society. (1)
Solyony: In twenty-five years you won't be in this world, thank God. In two or three years you'll die of a stroke, or else I shall lose my temper, dear boy, and put a bullet through your forehead. (1)
Masha: An oak in leaf beside the seashore, upon that oak a chain of gold (1)
Solyony: He had no time his tale to tell before the bear upon him fell.
Tuzenbakh: Perhaps people will talk about our loft existance and recall it with reverence. There are no tortures now, no executions, no invasions, but all the same, how much suffering! (1)\
Masha: In this town to know three languages is an unnecessary luxury. Not even a luxury but some kind of unnecessary appendage, like a sixth finger. We have a lot of superfluous knowledge.
Vershinin: It goes without saying that you are not going to overcome the mass of ignorance surrounding you; in the course of your life, little by little, you are going to have to give ground and get lost in the crowd of the hundred thousand, life will stifle you, but you still won't disappear, you won't remain without influence; after you will come maybe six people like you, then twelve, and so on, until people like you become the majority. In two or three hundred years life on earth will be inexplicably beautiful and amazing...Nab needs that kind of life, and if he doesn't have it yet, then he must have some presentiment of it. must wait, dream, get ready for it, for this he must see and know more than his grandfather, and father saw and knew. Masha:I'm staying for lunch. Irina: Someone really ought to write all this down... (1)
Tuzenbakh: But in order to take part in that life now, even if at a remove, one must prepare for it, one must work... Vershinin: Yes. But what a lot of flowers you've got. And a wonderful house. I envy you. My whole life I've been in quarters with two chairs and a sofa, and with stoves which always smoke. What I've lacked in my life is precisely flowers like these....Aah! Never mind! (1)
Kulygin: The history of fifty years of our Gymnasiumm written by me. A worthless little book, written out of idleness, bu read it all the same. (1)
Kulygin: Feci quod potui, faciant meliora potentes. (I have done what I can. Let those who are able do better) (1)
Tuzenbakh: I have a passionate thirst for life, for the struggle, for work, and that thirst has merged in my soul with my love for you, Irina, and as if it were all planned, you are beautiful and life seems to me so beautiful. (1)
Ferapont: And in Moscow, a contractor was telling us the other day at the Council, some merchants were eating pancakes; one of them ate forty pancakes and died of it. Forty or fifty. I can't remember. Andrey: You're sitting in Moscow, in a big restaurant, you don't know anybody and nobody know you, and at the same time you don't feel a stranger. Whereas here you know everybody and everybody know you, but you're a stranger, a stranger...A stranger and lonely... Ferapont: What? (2)
Vershinin: It's very typical of the Russian to have elevated thoughts, but tell me why he aims so low in life? (2)
Tuzenbakh: And in a thousand years man will still sigh, 'Ah, life is hard!' - and at the same time he will, as now, be afraid and not want to die. (2)
Vershinin: And how I would like to prove to you that for is there's no happiness, there can't be and there won't be...We must work and work, and happiness is something for our remote descendants. (2)
Tuzenbakh: In your view we shouldn't even dream of happiness. But what if I am happy? VErshinin: No, you're not. (2)
Tuzenbakh: Meaning...Look, it's snowing. What meaning is there in that? (2)
Masha: I think human beings mus have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty...To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky...You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind. (2)
Solyony: Be not angry, Aleko...Forget, forget your dreams... (2)
Chebutykin: And they also gave us proper Caucasian food: soup with onion, and for the main course - chekhartma, of meat. Solyony: Cheremsha isn't meat at all but a plant like our onion. Chebutykin: No, my friend. Chekhartma isn't an onion but a meat dish of mutton. Solyony:But I'm telling you, cheremsha is an onion. Chebutykin: And I'm telling you, chekhartma is mutton. Solyony: But I'm telling you, cheremsha is an onion. Chebutykin: Why am I having to argue with you? You've never been to the Caucasus and you haven't eaten chekhartma. Solyony: I haven't eaten it because I can't stand it. Cheremsha gives off the same smell as garlic. Andrey: [beseechingly] Gentlemen, enough! Please! (2)
Tuzenbakh: I grab them, (daughters) I run and all he time I'm thinking one thing: what will they still have to live through in this world! (3)
Tuzenbakh: And what a vision I had then of a happy life! Where has it gone? (3)
Chebutykin: I have remained behind like a migratory bird which has got old and can't fly. (4)
Chebutykin: The Baron is a good ma, but one baron more or one baron less - what can it mater? Let it be! What can it matter! (4)
Andrey: My wife is my wife. She is honest, decent, yesy, kind, but all the same there is something in her which brings her down to the level of a small, blind, horny-skinned animal. At all events, she isn't human. (4)
Solyony: I've used up a whole bottle today (cologne) and my hands still smell. They smell of dead bodies. (4)
Solyony: And he, so restless seeks the storm clouds, as if the storm can offer calm. (4)
Tuzenbakh: That tree is withered but it still sways in the wind with the others. (4)
Ferapont: Two thousand people froze to death. People were in a state of terror, he said. It was in Petersburg, or in Moscow - I can't quite remember. (4)
Vershinin: Once humanity was occupied with wars, filling the whole of its existence with campaigns, invasions, victories, all that has now had its day, and left behind a huge empty space, which for the time being there is nothing to fill; humanity is passionitly seeking that and of course will find it. Oh, if only it could be quick about it! (4)
Kulygin: It doesn't matter, let her cry, just let her...My sweet masha, me good Masha...You are my wife and I am happy in spite of everything. (4)
Chebutykin: [sings softly] Ta-ra...ra...booom-de-ay...ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay...[Reads the paper.] What can it matter! What can it matter! Olga: If only we knew, if only we knew! (4)
No comments:
Post a Comment