Three Sisters

Chekhov's premiere

"In two hundred, three hundred years, life on Earth will be unimaginably wonderful, amazing! Human beings need that kind of life, and if it doesn't exist yet, we need to feel it in the air, wait for it, dream about it, get ready for it."

For the first time in its history, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse will host this masterful study of family and its legacy by Anthon Chekhov as part of The Globe's 2024/25 Winter Season. In a new translation from Rory Mullarkey and with direction from Caroline Steinbeis, Three Sisters takes us into the heart of a family desperate for an escape from their ennui. Although written in 1900, many of the themes resonate heavily today as we each search for meaning in an increasingly tumultuous world.

What is the story?

Each at a different stage of their life, Olga, Masha, Irina Prozorova and their brother Andrei are stuck in a provincial backwater waiting for their lives to begin. Hoping to return to their once-grand life in Moscow, they all seek a way out of the village. But whether it comes via marriage, love (not mutually exclusive), work or ambition, it is not long until they discover that the path to freedom is littered with dissatisfaction, leaving them to come to terms with the fact that life is full of compromise, both emotionally and materially.