There are a lot of ways to describe a Chekhov play, but giddy fun is not usually one of them..
That’s the only way, though, to describe a Halley Feiffer take on a Chekhov play, as evidenced by Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow, her quasi-contemporary, wildly anachronistic, and genuinely, affectingly silly retelling of the Russian master’s Three Sisters, which opened tonight in the smaller, flexible space at MCC Theater’s newish home in Hell’s Kitchen.
The stage is set, literally, from the moment you enter. The seats have been arranged into opposing bleachers with a central playing space. Mark Wendland’s goofy, suggestive scenic design puts a roof over that central space that suggests an eaved country house, puts a mishmosh of Russian-ish furniture below (a chaise, a samovar, an upright piano), and hangs Christmas lights and Chinese lanterns. On a far wall is postcard blowup of Moscow, with giant, marquee letters above it, spelling out “Москва,” the Cyrillic spelling for the Russian capital. Moscow, as ever in this source material, is always looming just out of reach.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★ review here.]
Feiffer’s play, commissioned and originally produced by the Williamstown Theater Festival, has the let’s-have-fun spirit of a weekend in the mountains. It’s billed as “an adaptation” of Chekhov’s work, and it’s a very loose adaptation. Characters speak in a mostly modern argot, more Valley girl than czarist gentry. (The title, from that perspective, becomes exactly what an entitled sister would say, stomping her foot, as she demands to go to the nearby capital.) Clever costumes, Paloma Young, mix flowing gowns with modern touches. (Olga, the eldest sister, is in a dress and a Rodarte t-shirt.) Masha, the unhappily married middle sister, is, for no apparent or articulated reason, played, wonderfully, by a man.
All the connections and references across centuries and styles, even across genders, serve to underline the universality of Chekhov’s classic. It’s not just in the feudal Russian countryside; everyone, everywhere, faces disappointment, resentment, boredom, and lost love. Everyone yearns for something more — a different life, a better life, Moscow — and everyone must figure out how to handle not getting it. Vershinin, the philosophizing officer who comes to town and falls into an affair with Masha, likes to imagine how the world will change in 200 or 300 years. Tuzenbach, a baron and soldier and family hanger-on, has a summary reply. “I think a lot of things will change: people will fly, clothes will be dope as shit,” he says. “But nothing will actually really change.”
The entire cast is delightful, and has a blast with the funny and prolific Feiffer’s outrageous script: They’re all recognizable young actors, having digging into their overdrawn parts but nevertheless embodying their characters’ traditional sadness and frustration. Trip Cullman’s direction keeps them in frothy state of barely contained chaos. (The center, of course, will not hold.)
The man playing Masha is Chris Perfetti, who was wonderful in The Low Road at the Public a few seasons back, and he offers no explanation or apology in portraying Masha’s quivering, performative cynicism. Tavi Gevinson, recently of the Ivo van Hove Crucible on Broadway, is the young sister Irina, first hopeful and then defeated; Rebecca Henderson, on HBO’s Russian Doll is the domineering, regretful Olga. Greg Hildreth, who starred as Olaf in Frozen, brings a new kind of jolly melancholy, if that makes any sense, to their brother Andrey. Among the non-family characters, Steven Boyer, best known for Hand to God, is a manic Tuzenbach, the baron-soldier-hanger on, and Sas Goldberg, from Significant Other, Andrey’s manipulative wife, Natasha, into a Real Housewife in velour sweatsuits.
At the end of The Three Sisters, traditionally, the sisters are alone, mostly abandoned, and evicted from their home by their sister-in-law. It’s a Russian ending: Things are bad, but they can always be worse. In Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow, amid all the tonal changes, Feiffer also tweaks that final moment, too. Here, the lonely sisters are abandoned, but so they decide to actually go to Moscow. They know they won’t be happy there, either, but they figure they’ll give it a shot. It’s an American ending: You never know.
Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow opened July 18, 2019, at the MCC Theater Space and runs through August 3. Tickets and information: mcctheater.org
