The theatre collective Filter has since 2003 been creating audacious and playful productions, and this interpretation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, in collaboration with director Sean Holmes, is the latest in a series that has seen them revamp much-loved classics.

It’s the late nineteenth century, and the three Prozorov sisters are mourning their father, a soldier whose final posting took them to a miserable garrison town. Pining for Moscow, where they used to live, they find themselves stagnating. 

Everyone in their community seems trapped inside futility. The result is a concert of discontents, and over the course of the more than three years that the action spans the tone grows increasingly morbid.

As the siblings, Romola Garai mooches elegantly, while Poppy Miller imparts a motherly primness, and Clare Dunne as the youngest is sweet then pettish, although the marked disparity between her Irish accent and the way her sisters speak is unaccountable. 

Others are less convincing, and the interactions are mannered. The characters appear always to be performing – Jonathan Broadbent is especially demonstrative as the idle Baron Tuzenbach – and the subtle rhythms of Chekhov’s dialogue are never fully felt in a production that contains creative touches but limited pathos. 

Filter’s work makes ingenious use of sound, and Three Sisters seems ideally suited to this. It is the only one of Chekhov’s major plays to be set in a town, and he exploited urban noise suggestively: an accordion playing in the street, the cheery laughter of partygoers, the clang of a fire alarm, the squawk of itinerant musicians. 

Here, though, the sonic conceits feel effortful. Microphones amplify whispered conversations, presumably with the intention of making us feel like eavesdroppers. Boosted, the roar of boiling water signifies a storm. And between the acts a mix of music plays – its clash of sounds reflecting the characters’ muddled communication.

Jon Bausor’s spare design is more successful. The full depth of the stage is used, and all its machinery is visible. Homely comforts are absent, and the Prozorovs’ furniture doesn’t match – everything feels makeshift.  

Yet while Three Sisters has the potential to be heartrending, here it is played as though it’s Brecht, particularly when members of the technical crew are required to come onstage. 

In the process, we lose some of Chekhov’s painstaking observation of human foibles, and the poignancy and appeal of his work are compromised. What remains is original, but cold.

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