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review Lust. Alcoholism. Unrequited love. Untimely death. Adultery. Obsessive-compulsive, self-destructive behavior. Such are the components of "Three Sisters", Anton Chekhov's tale of the three Prozorov siblings who yearn to leave their dreary country life behind for the bright promise of Moscow. The stuff of high tragedy? Chekhov called it a comedy. Staging Chekhov is a high-wire act with laughter and hope on one side, tears and despair on the other. It's a very delicate balance. Slip and tumble to either side, and you're done for. Orange Coast College's current staging of "Three Sisters" teeters precariously at times, but manages to hold on to a satisfactory if uneven rendering of Chekhov's classic. The student ensemble creates an effective camaraderie onstage that has both the embrace and the jab of a true family interaction. But while the young actors grasp the surface world of their characters well, they often skim over the brooding hope and vague longings that simmer underneath. What's worse, mannerism and dialect discrepancies run rampant throughout. SoCal Gen X phrasing and gestures mingle uneasily with an oddly generic British affectation that jumps persistently about some cast members like a highly-contagious virus. Director Rita Renee has made some innovative choices to varying degrees of success. Her costuming of characters from late 19th Century Russia to early 1960s Las Vegas is visually intriguing, but a Russian soldier of any era sporting bleached hair and multiple ear studs is really pushing the envelope. More subtly effective is Renee's use of a gradually diminishing set as the play progresses. The starkness of the closing act reflects back hauntingly upon the relative opulence of the play's opening, providing a smart and aching complement to the three sisters' slowly dimming dreams of ever reaching Moscow. |