Anton Chekhov — Weekly Theater Guide

Urgent! Urgent! Play On Fire!

Mark Jackson and Beth Wilmurt have a long-standing relationship with Chekov’s The Three Sisters. Their devised Yes Yes To Moscow (which Jackson directed and Wilmurt starred in) was an eighty-minute comic romp, an inversion of the play’s signature wish — “We must go back to Moscow!” — that somehow worked itself around to a striking wistfulness that was, well, Chekhovian. And Wilmurt’s cabaret show, Olga, imagines the most sisterly of the three sisters as a game chanteuse, entertaining soldiers and yes, wishing to leave her provincial home and conquer the big stage that is Moscow and the world. It’s ending is also striking and wistful, so again Chekhovian.

One might say that KILL THE DEBBIE DOWNERS! KILL THEM! KILL THEM! KILL THEM OFF! kicking off the Shotgun Players’ 28th season is the third of the Jackson-Wilmurt Sisters, the last of the trilogy, or maybe the third of the quartet, or merely the unruly middle child of the quintet, who knows? Maybe we just need to slip them a copy of Uncle Vanya or The Cherry Orchard. Whatever its final position, DD TRIPLE KILL is both less contained and successful than its predecessors, but also — and this is what you should care about — more aesthetically and philosophically urgent. We’ll also add alert to the future. That too is Chekhovian, the other, less recognized one, but the one you get here and the one you should want. So leave your home and go — to the theater.

‘KILL THE DEBBIE DOWNERS! KILL THEM! KILL THEM! KILL THEM OFF!’ runs through April 21 at the Ashby Stage in Berkeley. For tickets and information click here. For the Full Review click here.

Necessary, Now PlayingJohn WilkinsApril 6, 2019Mark Jackson, Beth Wilmurt, The Shotgun Players, The Ashby Stage, Berkeley, Anton Chekhov, 'The Three Sisters'Comment

This 'Vanya' Is Too Much

What I’m going to say about Cutting Ball’s Uncle Vanya is completely unrealistic and unfair, but the problem here is rehearsal time and how theaters produce work. The production feels like a very well-rehearsed first draft, where everything was attempted and nothing rejected. You wonder what might have happened if they had spent an equal amount of time with a scalpel, paring closer and closer to the bone until every effect was either excised or found its way into the blood of Chekhov’s stunning play. There are real pleasures here, but too many experiments for the sake of experimenting.

‘Uncle Vanya’ runs to October 21 at the Exit on Taylor in San Francisco. For tickets and information click here. For full review click here.

The PastJohn WilkinsOctober 3, 2018Uncle Vanya, Anton Chekhov, Cutting Ball TheaterComment