“Three Sisters” by Anton Chekhov

Forget Moscow and pre-revolutionary Russia. Dimitris Xanthopoulos stages “Three Sisters” (1901) in the belief that every place and every era finds itself on the point of rupture, in a state of constant turmoil. He does retain the military environment of the provincial town, though, in which the three daughters and only son of a dead general now find themselves. They nurture a burning desire to return to the idealized city of their childhoods. But they are not in a position to make this happen.

“They sink into a state of inertia, into the fantasy of a ‘life’ in some ‘Moscow’ or other. Trapped within themselves, they lose touch with reality. Beyond the four walls of their home, they fall apart. This confrontation with Outside lies at the heart of the production. And this confrontation is all our stories— our anguished struggle to find our place in a world into which we were thrust, without reason or cause”, the director notes.

“They sink into the fantasy of a ‘life’ in some ‘Moscow’ or other. Trapped within themselves, they lose touch with reality. Beyond the four walls of their home, they fall apart. This confrontation with Outside lies at the heart of the production. And this confrontation is all our stories— our anguished struggle to find our place in a world into which we were thrust, without reason or cause”, the director notes.

“One's first acquaintance with Chekhov’s plays is often disappointing—I mean, you can summarize the plot in just a few words. But their charm lies not in their dialogue or their plot, but in the meaning hidden beneath the words, in the pauses and the silences, in the protagonists’ inner action”, wrote the first director of Anton Chekhov’s works, Konstantin Stanislavski.

In Dimitris Xanthopoulos’ production, the lead role of the younger sister, Irina, is played by an 18-year-old non-professional, Kalliopi Kanellopoulou-Stamou, who dazzled audiences with her talent at the Onassis Stegi's Onassis Youth Festival.

This is the third time the Onassis Stegi will be staging a work by Anton Chekhov. The first was in 2015 with the “Cherry Orchard” directed by Nikos Karathanos, the second in 2016 with “Who left this fork here?”—a wired stage anatomy of the third act of “Three Sisters” directed by Daniel Fish as part of the “Made in USA” festival.

Now Dimitris Xanthopoulos is staging "Three Sisters” ten years after his directorial baptism of fire with Chekhov’s “The Seagull”.