A Classic Chekhov Play is Remade at Lake Forest College

The classic Anton Chekhov play Three Sisters was a natural choice for director Richard Corley’s first production, which opens Friday at Lake Forest College’s Allen Carr Theater in Hixon Hall.

A three-hour, four-act meditation on alienation, loneliness and the passage of time, the play contrasts the hopes and realities of three sisters who grew up in cosmopolitan Moscow, but have been relegated by circumstances to living together in a small, provincial town.

“Chekhov is truly the holy grail of acting and directing,” said the play’s producer, Richard Pettengill. “There is so much to explore in what’s beneath the lines.”

Corley decided to take that challenge to the limit in this production, by undertaking a new translation and adaptation of the work in partnership with a first-generation Russian-American student, Nadia Vinogradova.

The new translation emphasizes the theme of how “time relentlessly erodes our illusions,” he said.

References to time onstage include a turntable, intermittent chimes, references to watches and a shattering clock. His aspiration was to keep the dialogue as close to the original words as possible, which he said was difficult sometimes.

“He’s a very plain writer,” Corley said. “It’s difficult not to embellish.”

Corley, who brings to many years of award-winning experience as a playwright, director and producer, previously directed in Moscow and already had one new translation/adaptation under his belt: Chekhov’s "The Seagull."

But to get to Chekhov’s original thoughts, he needed a translator who could think both in Russian and in English. That’s where Nadia came in. Corley sent an email out to all the faculty asking if they had any native Russian speakers in their classes.

Since her major is pre-med, not theater, her instructor initially approached her asking if she could think of anyone who would be able to do a literal translation of Chekhov’s work.

“I jumped on it,” said Nadia, whose mother worked for a literary magazine in Russia and who also has her own literary aspirations.

"I want to be like Chekhov," she said.  The legendary Russian writer actually spent more of his life as a doctor.

“Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress,” he is quoted as saying.

Nadia banged out  the translation of the three-hour work in about a month and a half last summer and Corley did an initial draft of the actors’ lines. They traded the work back and forth, with Nadia making suggestions about dialogue and shades of meaning.

Finally, Corley said, it was time to try the play out with actors.        

“We needed to get into rehearsal and see if things sound good in the actor’s mouths,” he said. “I’ve been pretty pleased at how it holds up.”

In addition to the new adaptation, Corley asked LFC music faculty member Don Meyer to compose original music for the play.

Meyer said it was the first time he’d composed for the theatre, and he enjoyed it very much. He took different approaches to the diagetic music, or that heard by and created by actors on stage, and the music he used to link and set the tone for each act. The diagetic music is set in the same place and period as the play, 19th century Russia.

But for the non-diagetic music, Meyer said, Corley asked him specifically not to write Russian music. Chekhov is considered to have a more European mindset, Meyer said, and the music both reflects that and has a more modern sensibility.

Each of the three acts is set in a different season, and Meyer said he kept that in mind as he composed as well.

“It has been a really wonderful experience,” he said.

Show times and dates this weekend are March 25 and 26 at 7:30 p.m. with a Saturday matinee at 1:30 p.m. It also runs March 31 through April 2 at 7:30 p.m. with a matinee on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. Tickets are free for Lake Forest College students, faculty and staff, $3 for other students, alumni and senior citizens and $7 for non-affiliated adults.