Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

218 Chapter 8 The Modern Theatre
The three sisters of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters represent their extreme
grief at the end of this classic 1901 masterpiece, directed by Claire Lasne
Darcueil at the Théâtre de la Tempète in Paris in 2014. © Laurencine Lot
mother-son, and brother-brother relationships, as played
out in the interiors of ordinary homes. Controversial in
their own time, these plays retain their pertinence today
and still have the power to inform, move, and even
shock. The reason for their lasting impact lies in Ibsen’s
choice of issues and his skill at showing conflicting sides
through brilliantly captured psychological detail.
The realistic theatre spread rapidly throughout Europe
as other writers, inspired by Ibsen, followed suit. The
result was a proliferation of “problem plays,” as they were
sometimes called, which focused genuine social concern
through realistic dramatic portrayals. In Germany, Gerhart
Hauptmann (1862–1946) explored the plight of the middle
and proletarian classes in several works, most notably in his
masterpiece The Weavers (1892). In England, Irish-born
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) created an intellectual
brand of comedy through which he addressed issues such
as slum ownership (in Widowers’ Houses, 1892), prostitution
(in Mrs. Warren’s Profession, 1902), and urban poverty
(in Major Barbara, 1905). In France, André Antoine
(1858–1943) created his Théâtre Libre in 1887 to encourage
stagings of realistic dramas, including Ibsen’s Ghosts
and The Wild Duck, Hauptmann’s Weavers, and the French
plays of Eugène Brieux (1858–1932), including Damaged
Goods (1902), about syphilis, and Maternity (1903), about
birth control. By the turn of the century, realism was virtually
the standard dramatic form in Europe.
If the realistic theatre came to prominence with the
plays of Ibsen, it attained its stylistic apex in the major
works of Anton Chekhov (1860–1904). Chekhov was
a physician by training and a writer of fiction by vocation.
Toward the end of his career, in association with
realist director Konstantin Stanislavsky (see the chapter
on “The Actor”) and the Moscow Art Theatre, he also
achieved success as a playwright through four plays
that portray the last decades of the czarist era in Russia
with astonishing force and subtlety: The Seagull (1896),
Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901), and The
Cherry Orchard (1904). The intricate craftsmanship of
these plays makes them seem more like lived-in worlds
than artistic works. Even the minor characters seem to
breathe the same air we do.
Chekhov’s technique was to create deeply complex
relationships among his characters and to develop his plots
and themes more or less between the lines. Every Chekhovian
character is filled with secrets that the dialogue
never fully reveals. As an example of Chekhov’s realist
style, examine the dialogue in the following scene from
The Three Sisters. In this scene, Vershinin, an army colonel,
meets Masha and her sisters, Irina and Olga, whom
Vershinin dimly remembers from past years in Moscow:
VERSHININ: I have the honor to introduce myself, my name
is Vershinin. I am very, very glad to be in your house at
last. How you have grown up! Aie-aie!
IRINA: Please sit down. We are delighted to see you.
VERSHININ: (with animation) How glad I am, how glad I am!
But there are three of you sisters. I remember—three
little girls. I don’t remember your faces, but that your
father, Colonel Prozorov, had three little girls I remember
perfectly. How time passes! Hey-ho, how it passes! . . .
IRINA: From Moscow? You have come from Moscow?
VERSHININ: Yes. Your father was in command of a battery
there, and I was an officer in the same brigade. (To
Masha) Your face, now, I seem to remember.
MASHA: I don’t remember you.
VERSHININ: So you are Olga, the eldest—and you are
Masha—and you are Irina, the youngest—