CityLife

Preview: Three Sisters - The Lowry

Chekhov, agrees rising star Romola Garai, sometimes has a reputation for being a bit stuffy and, frankly, unsexy.

But, according to the star of hit film Atonement and the recent TV version of Emma, the new production of Three Sisters by exhilarating theatre company Filter – heading to The Lowry next week – is very, very different to that pre-conception.

“This is a fun interpretation,” she enthuses. “I know people think of Chekhov as linen suits and all that. I was in a production like that and I loved it, but this is different and exuberant.
This company and director are very, very free and actor-led.

“On this, you’re encouraged not just to be where you’re supposed to stand, but to move around if you want to.

“That’s a constant process, not just something you devise in rehearsals and then stick to. Of course, if other people are allowed to move, then you have to be ready to move with them.

“So you’re having to concentrate all the time. You have to be constantly engaged and alert. I think that’s brought something great to the production, which is not like anything I’ve ever worked on before.

“It was very nerve-wracking at first, but once we got going it proved to be this wonderful process. Although props and so on remain the same, it means visually what people see is not going to be the same every night.

“I just think, like Shakespeare, there’s no reason you can’t do it both ways. The plays can really take it. I really hope this production is part of a gradual process of people starting to look at Chekhov in a different way.”

Other cast members include Poppy Miller, who played Isabella Knightly to Romala’s Emma in the BBC’s recent adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, and Mark Theodore, who appeared at The Lowry recently in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s explosive drama Days Of Significance.

Following hit show Twelfth Night, in Filter, the Lyric Hammersmith’s artistic director Sean Holmes delves beneath the surface of Chekhov’s text to explore one family’s search for ever-elusive happiness.

“Frustrated by their small-town existence, the Prozorov family long to return to Moscow. But as relationships, duty and misguided optimism take hold they soon find their dreams drifting further away from them.

“It’s not modern dress so much as without time, not rooted in any particular era. But there are no changes to the text,” Romola emphasises. “I had no thought that I would ever play Masha, because of that perception she’s very controlled and dry. I’ve never really thought of myself in that way, so it wasn’t the sort of part I’d dreamed of playing!

“But by the time you go out on tour you’ve been playing the part for a while and the big change is in the audiences. It’s still amazing to me that the further you get out of London, the more generous they are.”

Three Sisters is at The Lowry from Tuesday until March 6, 2010.