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Show -f 1 - ' - - ' ' ' ! p I I f I' V T . I f , . r ' ' 1 ' . ' (Left to right) Devon Williams as Masha, Laura Tietjen as Irina, Jaye Maynard as Olga and Philip Taylor as Andrey are featured in "The Three Sisters" at the Babcpck Theatre. 'Three Sisters' search for happiness in University of Utah production Anton Chekhov once wrote that "on stage everything should be as complex and as simple as in life." Chekhov's classic, "The Three Sisters," a comic tragedy centering around three women's search for happiness, perhaps best reflects the Russian playwright's philosophy on the theater. As the annual Student Advisory Council production at the University of Utah in Salt Lake, "The Three Sisters" will run in the Babcock Theatre April 25-27 and May 1-4 at 8 p.m., with a 2 p.m. matinee on May 4. Olga, Masha and Irina Prozorov, stranded in a provincial Russian military outpost after their father's death, long to start a new life in their native Moscow where they're convinced con-vinced life is beautiful and meaningful. meaning-ful. The sisters try to relieve their loneliness by seeking some purpose in their lives. Olga tries to find satisfaction in teaching but dreams of a home and family. Miserable in her marriage to a boring schoolmaster, school-master, Masha stumbles into an affair with a lieutenent colonel. The youngest sister, Irina, maintains her discontented view of life is because she doesn't know "the dignity of work," so she finds a job in a local telegraph office. As the play progresses, the three become increasingly aware that their efforts to find happiness must be compromised. Their futility is compounded when their brother marries Natasha, a peasant woman who slowly pushes the sisters out of the solace of their home. "I call 'The Three Sisters' a comedy about man's inability to cope with the tragedies of life. The sisters do learn to cope with their existence and, like all of us, realize they must look to the future with hope," said director Jonathan Greenman. "The play is a truthful representation representa-tion of life a mix of happiness, tears and warm human emotion which makes it difficult to define. Life is neither black or White, comedy or tragedy." Greenman describes "The Three Sisters' as "a play about human behavior." "We all rationalize in order to continue living," said Greenman. "Only in 'The Three Sisters' the characters do it on a grand scale." Time magazine's theater critic, T.E. Kalem, once tagged Chekhov as "the poet laureate of the commonplace." common-place." "In presenting vivid, selective glimpses of ordinary life, Checkhov simultaneously plumbs the nature of existence with its brevity, hope, joy and sorrow," Kalem said. Other critics have described 'The Three Sisters' as a play about social change, about the fall of the aristocracy and the rise of the working class in Russia at the turn of the century. Greenman doesn't totally agree. "Vershinin has a line in the play that goes something like this: 'If only our cultured people could work and if only our . working people had culture.' It's a significant line," he said. "The sisters, who represent the intelligensia, don't get anything they want out of life, yet they have sensitivity. Natasha, who is from the lower economic strata, just sees dollars and work but doesn't care at all about people. She's the least sensitive but the most successful. Chekhov is saying that both classes need to grow in order to obtain a more viable society. "However, Chekhov is not writing a social problem play. The beauty in the play is in the humaness of it." Greenman has cast Jaye Maynard, Devon Williams and Laura Tietjen as Olga, Masha and Irina. Philip Taylor and Susan Welby will play their brother Andrey and his wife Natasha. Other cast members include Raymond Hoskins, Ron Harris, Kim Weiss, Dennis Sullivan, Graham Bell, Randolph T. Burks, Danny Keele, Rett Neale and Ruby Thomas. Spencer Brown has designed to set, Louise Foster, the costumes, Kobe Enright, the ' lighting, and Kevin Dudley, the sound. Stephen Randall is the production stage manager. Tickets are available at the Pioneer Memorial Theatre box office (581-6961). |