From Booklist
It was inevitable that the American theater's most Chekhovian writer, Lanford Wilson, would be asked to translate Chekhov. The great Russian's influence marks virtually all of Wilson's plays, from Balm in Gilead to Fifth of July and Talley's Folly. What could not have been predicted was how sensitive and intelligent a translator Wilson would be. First commissioned by the Hartford Stage Company in the early 1980s and rewritten several times since its first production in 1984, Wilson's Three Sisters is a breathtaking, evocative work in which every character springs to life on the page. Of course, even in stilted translations, one feels for the play's central characters--Olga, Masha, and Irina--and their fruitless yearning to transcend their petty lives and see Moscow. But in Wilson's literate, highly readable version, one comes to understand and feel sympathy even for the play's so-called villainess, the gauche upstart sister-in-law, Natalya. We eagerly await Wilson's next translating project: Uncle Vanya. Jack Helbig

Book Description
"Lanford Wilson's translation is a revelation. It sings in an actor's mouth. Fluent, funny, sexy, supremely actable, it is what the French call a premiere plume, a "first pen" --a perfect translation--that is, not a translation at all, but seemingly the original. What a gift Lanford has given us! Chekhov's 'Three Sisters' in the original for the American stage." --Emily Mann "This translation is so good that I felt I was hearing the characters speak for the first time. The language is wonderfully easy to speak, to understand and to feel, yet it is also marvelously subtle. It is a real triumph and is clearly the best one available: no other comes close." --Edward Hermann

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The play focuses on the lives of three sisters, Olga, Masha, and Irina, young women of the Russian gentry who try to fill their days in order to construct a life that feels meaningful while surrounded by an array of military men, servants, husbands, suitors, and lovers, all of whom constitute a distractions from the passage of time and from the sisters' desire to return to their beloved Moscow.

SYNOPSIS