ABSTRACT
‘The Seagull’, which opened the present season at the Fortune, was in some respects admirably produced, but there were serious flaws. Several times the audience was made aware by a confused oddity of effect that something had gone wrong. In this revival [of ‘Three Sisters’], with a play requiring even more delicacy of orchestration, we are not once pulled up short. The difference is mainly due, no doubt, to the skilful, imaginative handling of the production by M. Komisarjevsky. Not only do his settings really help the play by their touches of aptly incongruous brightness, but the general interpretation is so satisfying that we follow the subtlest turns and twists of emotion as easily as we might watch an arabesque of smoke curling away into nothingness. We slip immediately into intimate relation with a group of cultivated exiles; we know when they are saying one thing and thinking another; and when it is no longer possible for any of the sisters to exclaim with hope ‘To Moscow!’ we know that they have said farewell to their youth.
