The bored and whiny denizens of Halley Feiffer’s Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow are unabashedly depicted as exaggerations of recognizable reality. This lampoon of Chekhov’s Three Sisters was commissioned for the Williamstown Theater Festival and is now playing MCC’s new Off-Broadway Robert W. Wilson theater.
We know right away that we’re not in Chekhov’s early 20th century Russia when the eldest sister Olga opens the play with a profanity-laced monologue describing how ugly she feels and what a dreary life she leads (she compares every part of her body to feces). Masha and Irina answer her, employing contemporary vernacular like “BFF,” “whatevs,” and “bee-tee-dubs” (I had to look that last one up, it’s a bastardization of “BTW,” the social media abbreviation for “by the way”). The modern overlay jokes wear thin after a while, but this Moscow times five is still a both a hoot and a insightful commentary on the original.
Like the sharp cartoons drawn by her father Jules in the cherished, defunct Village Voice, Feiffer’s creations are satirical take-offs on neurotics, yet they maintain a degree of sympathy, evoking hilarious laughter and sighs of pity. As in the original, three sisters spend four acts moaning over being trapped in a provincial backwater, and longing for the Russian capital of their girlhood, romanticized into the answer to all their frustrations.
Trip Cullman, Feiffer’s frequent collaborating director, skillfully balances outlandish farce with heartbreaking pathos as the playwright manages to riotously parody Chekhov’s self-indulgent siblings and their gloomy circle while offering new insight into their depression. I have seen countless productions of The Three Sisters, but this was the first time I actually felt sorry for the malicious Natasha, the grasping wife of Andrey, the ineffectual brother of the titular trio, and for the obnoxious Solyony, an unsuccessful suitor to the youngest sister Irina.
The production emphasizes outsider status by casting Masha as a man and Solyony with an actor with dwarfism. A gay subtext is brought to the surface as the sexualities of Masha, the clumsy baron Tusenbach, and the insecure Solyony becomes ambiguous.
The game cast manages to combine the raunchy edge of the dialogue with a honest compassion for these desperate dreamers. Rebecca Henderson exposes the fragile heart underneath Olga’s venomous wit. Chris Perfetti is both femininely alluring and pulsingly angry as Masha. Tavi Gevinson, an actress I have previously found cold, captures the spoiled yet charming appeal of Irina.
As noted, Sas Goldberg and Matthew Jeffers manage to make the usually repellant Natasha and Solyony sympathetic as Ryan Spahn does for Kulygin, Masha’s wimpy, showtune-loving husband. Steven Boyer is a touching Tusenbach, Alfredo Narcisco a complex, sexy Vershinin (Masha’s lover); Ray Anthony Thomas a comically tragic Chebutykin (the alcoholic doctor), and Ako and Gene Jones are a pair of full-fleshed-out servants.
