Chekhov à la Brontë: We Are Three Sisters

We are Three Sisters is the new play by Blake Morrison which will be premiered next September 9 at the Viaduct Theatre in Halifax before touring the UK this autumn in a Northern Broadsides production directed by Barrie Rutter.

Keighley News and The Telegraph & Argus report the presence of the author tomorrow, May 19, in Haworth to talk about his new play:

Blake Morrison has set We Are Three Sisters in Haworth in 1848 when Emily, Charlotte and Anne were busy writing.
The play is an adaptation of The Three Sisters, which was written by Russian writer Chekhov in 1900.
Chekhov was himself inspired by the Brontë story while he was writing his tale of women stuck in a provincial town.
Morrison’s new play was commissioned by renowned Yorkshire theatre company Northern Broadsides. He has previously adapted Greek classics as well as transplanting German and Italian comedies to Yorkshire.
A spokesman for Northern Broadsides said Morrison’s play told of three remarkable young women who lived their lives brightly. He said: “Charlotte, Anne and Emily Bronte light up their world with outspoken wit, aspirations, dreams and ideas. We Are Three Sisters is a pearl of a play which evokes with piercing clarity the life and distinct personalities of these three spirited individuals.
“It has exquisitely-drawn characterisations, a nod to Chekhov and a touch of poetic licence. (...)
Blake Morrison will be at the West Lane Baptist Centre, Haworth, on Thursday at 7.30pm. For tickets, ring (01535) 640188.

The author talks about his approach to The Stage and The Guardian:

But Natasha, Masha and Olga as Charlotte, Emily and Anne? A trio of Russian aristocratic women as the tragically short-lived authors of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall? Wasn't that just nuts?
In fact, Donald Rayfield's biography of Chekhov tells us that he'd read a life of the Brontës in 1896, four years before writing the play. And at least one British director has drawn inspiration from the Brontë connection: Katie Mitchell, for her National theatre production of Nicholas Wright's translation in 2003.
As far as I know, however, no one has yet reworked Chekhov's play so that it reflects life in Haworth Parsonage in the 1840s. Perhaps that's because it would seem like sacrilege. But the parallels are undeniable:
• Three sisters;
• A temperamental artistic brother (Andrei/Branwell);
• An old servant;
• A preoccupation with love and marriage;
• A belief in the value of work;
• Stoicism;
• A tragic ending.
Unfortunately for any would-be adapter, the differences are undeniable, too. Masha seems the obvious role for Emily, for instance – but in Chekhov's play Masha is married and as far as we know there was no man, let alone a husband (or a Vershinin), in Emily's life. Similarly, in Chekhov the father is dead, whereas Patrick Brontë outlived all his children and can't just be cut from the story. Then there are the military officers hanging round the Serghyeevnas' house – since no soldier, to our knowledge, ever visited the Parsonage, what was to be done with them?
For a time I gave up trying to make things fit. Then Barrie Rutter – actor, director and founder of Northern Broadsides – urged me to have another look. And this time, after re-reading the Brontës' novels, poems and letters, I began to explore a further connection. Branwell had a married lover 15 years older than he was, Mrs Robinson (a gift of a name), whose affair with him was cataclysmic – much as the arrival of the "fourth sister", the vulgar Natasha, Andrei's wife, is a source of disruption in Chekhov's play. There was a plotline to work with here. I could make a start.
A year and several drafts later, the casting is well-advanced, the designer Jess Worrall (a Brontë fanatic) is busy on the set and costumes, and a tour is in place for the autumn. I'm well aware that not everyone will approve – that Chekhovians may hate the way scenes have been added and characters subtracted, and that Brontëites may object to the liberties I've taken with chronology. But I hope the play will also offer insights into the place of love and passion in the Brontës' lives. And also that by drawing on Chekhov, I can banish the gloom surrounding the Brontës and reveal their resilience, their radical thinking and (yes, amazing though it might seem) their humour.
The text isn't set in stone, and I've still to decide how to handle the sisters' famous yearning for "Moscow, Moscow, Moscow". Should it be "Keighley, Keighley, Keighley", "Scarborough, Scarborough, Scarborough", or "London, London, London"? We'll have to see.

Categories: Theatre