Three Sisters (TCG Edition)
ISBN: 9781559366816
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Theatre Communications Group
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Literature; Fiction;

Chekhov's complex drama about the fate of an aristocratic family in free fall is brought to life wonderfully by director Jenny Sullivan and an impressive cast that includes Tessa Thompson as Irina, Jennifer Westfeldt as Masha, and Sarah Zimmerman as Olga. The cast maintains its enthusiasm and energy throughout the production. Although listeners may initially find it challenging to distinguish voices and names without visual queues, this is easily overcome thanks to the quality of the performance and its distinctively rendered characters. Performed live, this audiobook includes audience laughter and sounds from the stage, which elevate the listening experience and highlight the theatrical nature of the production. The cast members are not standing in recording booths and reading into microphones-they have an audience engaged in their performance, and this sparks the listener's imagination. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the provincial town of Taganrog, Ukraine, in 1860. In the mid-1880s, Chekhov became a physician, and shortly thereafter he began to write short stories.

Chekhov started writing plays a few years later, mainly short comic sketches he called vaudvilles. The first collection of his humorous writings, Motley Stories, appeared in 1886, and his first play, Ivanov, was produced in Moscow the next year. In 1896, the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg performed his first full- length drama, The Seagull. Some of Chekhov's most successful plays include The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and Three Sisters. Chekhov brought believable but complex personalizations to his characters, while exploring the conflict between the landed gentry and the oppressed peasant classes. Chekhov voiced a need for serious, even revolutionary, action, and the social stresses he described prefigured the Communist Revolution in Russia by twenty years. He is considered one of Russia's greatest playwrights.

Chekhov contracted tuberculosis in 1884, and was certain he would die an early death. In 1901, he married Olga Knipper, an actress who had played leading roles in several of his plays. Chekhov died in 1904, spending his final years in Yalta.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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