…Sisters

In a green gloom of hanging baskets, baize, playing cards, ping pong and even live rabbits, six actors go in search of their roles, and of lost time. They deliver intensely lit fragments of Chekhov's speeches. They swap costumes before they've finished falling in love. And even if you're a Chekhov buff their identities are rarely clear and never stable.What is clear is the way that love, loss and cruelty get obliquely handed on between this domestic group who, with the help of Naomi Dawson's unchanging design and Jack Knowles's sensitive live lighting, begin by running wild inside their house and end as tragic statues in their own garden. Director Chris Goode's plangent deconstruction of 'Three Sisters' preserves the emotional story of Chekhov's play, though its plot details are literally torn off a note pad and thrown up into the air. It's flawed, and at times confusing. But by making the shared future of the audience and actors a compact of uncertainty (at least for the next ninety minutes), it makes you feel Chekhov's requiem for a lost future in an acutely new way.