Three Sisters - STUDENT EDITION

STUDENT EDITION - includes Notes & Commentary

Following their father's death, life for sisters Olga, Masha and Irina in a Russian provincial garrison town has become unbearably dull

They feel they have become culturally, romantically and intellectually starved

To these sisters, Moscow, where they once lived and in spite of its sad memories, has become a symbol of unfulfilled hope, promises and opportunity, and one which contrasts with the tedium of their own lives and circumstances

The sisters' main hope of moving to Moscow depends on their brother, Andrey, with his ambitions to work in academia in Moscow

Set over three and a half years at the turn of the twentieth century, and premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1901, Chekhov's play has become among the most iconic in modern theatre.

As an internationally acclaimed playwright who is also proficient in Russian, Michael Frayn is ideally placed to offer us a wholly accurate yet modern and playable translation of Chekhov's classic play

For this edition he has also provided a full introduction and a chronology of Chekhov's life and works

REVIEWS

Michael Frayn's "ambition in translating the piece was to recreate for an English audience the naturalness and 'glancing eloquence' of the original, and I think he succeeds completely" ~ Spectator

Frayn's translation is " ... full o those little liberties and intimacies of ordinary speech which override grammar and syntax and betray moods of ordinary people and the impulses of the heart" ~ Daily Telegraph

You'd be hard put to find a better script to work with than this translation by Michael Frayn . . . It sticks rigorously to the inner thrust of the play while giving it a fresh, crisp clarity that makes it not just accessible but compelling to watch. The underlying tragedy . . . is intact. It is made more moving, not less, by the way Frayn's ineffably light touch has caught too the comedy of Andrey and his three sisters' ~ GUARDIAN

'Frayn puts well the central statement of this most moving of dramas: it is about the irony of the hopes by which people live and the way their destiny mocks them. Chekhov shows how life is both nourished and poisoned by the act of hope itself' ~ DAILY TELEGRAPH



This translation is by Michael Frayn, one of today's most eminent British playwrights and translators of Russian drama.