72. The Three Sisters

My last Chekhov play! I had someone bring me a meal due to my broken leg, and I told her that I was reading Chekhov in my confinement. She said, "I could never read Chekhov. I am prone to depression, and he just does not put me in a good place." I suppose she is right. He is pretty depressing, but I am finishing up my foray, and I don't feel depressed. I am reading his short stories now, and there is a little biography in the introduction, and he is a fascinating personage, and he can write! I think all Russian writers can be depressing but SO GOOD! I just cannot even formulate my thoughts yet, but all three of these plays just pulled me in.

I told my youngest son, Paul, that I was reading Chekhov, and he said, "Is this so you can 'Check Ov' more books from your list?" Such a clever boy. 

He also told me about the expression I had never heard of: "Chekhov's Gun." This is what it means:

Chekhovs gun(ProperNoun)

An element that is introduced early in the story whose significance to the plot does not become clear until later. (https://www.definitions.net/definition/Chekhovs%20gun)

He told me this after I read the first play, and I will be darned if ALL THREE of these plays had a gun in it! LOL! 

Here is Mustich's take on why this is an important play to read:  

It’s true that Chekhov’s plays are filled with unhappy people, and if you suffer through a bad production, you might think there is not much more to them than miserable Russians moping on country estates, moaning about failed affairs and thwarted ambitions. Then again, an inept production of Oedipus the King might make Greek tragedy seem like some sick combination of soap opera and horror movie. But just as Aeschylus and Sophocles treat the fundamental and enduring themes of human existence—fate, inheritance, savagery, pride, justice—so Chekhov treats the worries of our daily lives: loneliness, love, financial uncertainty, the persistent pangs of time’s passing. Chekhov wrote more than a dozen plays, but the last four are his most accomplished and most performed, and the quartet—because of their original realization by Konstantin Stanislavski under the auspices of the Moscow Art Theater—are seminal works in theatrical history. Three Sisters (1901) depicts sophisticated Muscovites struggling to adjust to life in the country.

By the way, I found a 1966 play with Geraldine Page and Shelly Winters on YouTube. So good!