Working from Laurence Senelick’s 2010 translation, this staging of Chekhov’s masterpiece is something of a rarity: a Three Sisters set firmly in its pre-Revolutionary place and period, and played with an almost complete cast.

Director Clara Voda creates a pressure cooker of feeling and frustration in a confined, furniture-packed space (designed by Ella Wilkinson). The energy is febrile at times, with characters talking over and under one another. They fail to listen when they should and frequently blunder into moments of crucial importance to others. The men are uniformly lacking in emotional intelligence and tact.

The sisters are vividly played. Madeline Li is Masha, trapped in marriage to a man who has revealed himself to be a dullard. Olga (Teodora Matović) frets over her lost youth and looming promotion to school headmistress. Tessa Olsson is perhaps the most striking as Irina, whose yearning for a more fulfilling life in Moscow leaves her pale, sickly and forever stretching toward a light source she cannot reach, like an etiolated plant. Hers is the plight that touches us most completely.

Three Sisters: Teodora Matović, Tessa Olsson and Madeline Li. Photo © Robert Miniter

Emma Wright...