Hope and despair is communicated in many different ways between different characters. Masha and her husband show hope and despair, Masha wants so desperately to be free and be with the major and Kruglin wants Masha to love him. A good example of this is in act 4 when Masha says good bye to the major. Despair is communicated in act 3 with the doctor when he talks about how life does not really exist. He is in despair. Irina shows hope throughout about going to Moscow but at the end she finally realises that there is no hope and that she should just settle with what she could have. She is chasing a dream that rarely happens that she will fall deeply in love with a man and live happily ever after. Masha is very dark and always wears black. She also wears a hat in order to be noticed which is ironic as she most disconnected from the rest of the family. The hat symbolises her hiding from the truth. She is rebellious which also shows that the hat is a symbol of independence.
The Baron is a very posh upper class character who I think poses a few questions about his role. His character profile is very important. The fact that he is small and geeky matches his role. His warm character contrasts with Masha who is a cold character. His name also poses a question that maybe it is a double meaning that he is actually barren. He also attempted to look causal in act 3 when he comes in looking almost quite camp. His use of volume is very important as he is quite small and makes him look like he wants to be noticed. His super objective is to get Irina to marry him but at the end he finally comes to the conclusion that it’s only for security not love. He wishes so desperately for Irina to love him. He is one of the most engaging characters as he made me interested in what he was saying and he was quite amusing.
Mark Theodor playing Soloyony was also another actor I found very engaging. I thought it was interesting that they chose a black actor to play his role. He was a very hard character to understand because of his “on edge” state of mind. At the beginning he claimed his undying love for Irena who rejected him with disgust and shock. He then told her that he will leave her but if he ever sees her with any other man he would kill them. It was not till the end that the audience realise once the Baron and Irina where engaged to get married, that what he said was true. There was great sense of fire, rage and of being scared when you see him pull out the gun to the baby. It made me feel very tense and I knew what was going to happen next. He was very mysterious and made me very interested in what he was saying at all time. His physicality and voice were very interesting and he gave a great sense of being ambiguous in what and how he spoke. We could never tell what was on his mind only how he was feeling. An outcast. His mannerism of spraying his hands was very important as it was an act of trying to remove the smell of death. His character brooded the rest of the characters and the relationship between him and the Baron noticeably contrasted as they are complete opposites. Soloyny was very attention seeking and needed to be noticed by the Baron.
3 sisters explore the issues of love, despair, rejection, and aspirations.
During the first act there was a lot going on. People kept arriving. You could see the relation ships between the characters quite clearly even in the first 20 minutes. The most interesting thing about the play was the use of space and set. Although it was simplistic it helped communicate where they were.
There was a good use of sound. What I found most astounding was the way they used the microphones to highlight certain sounds. For example, the use of boiling the kettle. This was very clever. Not only the use of the microphone, but the use of science that came with it. It was almost like time could not go on until the kettle was boiled. Also when the doctor was upstairs alone drunk, this was significant moment in the play that shaped how he felt of life. What he felt his purpose was and that how do we know if people even exist and that there not just a figure of everyone’s imagination. They incorporated the use of the microphone when he washed his face with water from the bowl. At this point he showed a complete emotional downfall.